RANTS AND RAMBLES

• • DISCLAIMER: When I review books, weaknesses and inconsistencies tend to dominate my discussion; therefore, I will emphasize that any particular rant (and, yes, they can be long-winded) does not have special bearing on my unified opinion of the book. For this, please refer to my overall star rating. Additionally, this review is my personal opinion, intended to help like-minded readers navigate the plethora of available options. Use it as a tool but do not assign undue importance to it (i.e. feel free to disagree with me).
  • There are so…many…ellipses and M-dashes in this book. I understand each writer has their own style, but some choices made by Dan are questionable. Ellipses (three dots) and the M-dash (a particularly long dash), both of which are used to denote pauses were…overused. About two pages after realizing this writing annoyance, I found two facing pages with no fewer than 13 ellipses and 5 M-dashes between them including a single sentence with 3 ellipses. Writing in this manner to articulate mannerisms, hesitation, patterns of speech, etc. is clumsy at best and visually breaks the immersion. It looks and reads a lot more like comic book dialogue than a novel…which made sense when I looked at Dan’s portfolio.
  • There are a number of weirdly unnecessary restatements by character where they say something and then immediately restate it in an awkward way. For example: “It looks like fireflies,” Raoul said quietly from right behind them. “The glow. It’s like a firefly’s abdomen.”
  • This is not a detective novel. Though marketed as a genre mashup between fantasy and mystery/detective, it is solidly fantasy (albeit generic and dull fantasy) with few to no aspects common to detective novels. It is chalk full of fantasy style and trope including an unnecessary prologue (actually chapter 1, but it operates as a prologue) set months before the rest of the book, exposition on magic systems, history, world building, and plot reliance on politics, bad guys, creatures, etc. On the other hand, nothing in its style reads like a detective novel. The “mystery” is straightforward and dull, the detective work is rudimentary, and the case cannot be solved until the very end when the bad guy provides critical information. Do not get this book expecting an interesting genre-bending mystery in a fantasy setting. You will be disappointed.
  • The world the story is set in might be the best part of the book though even it is a bit generic. Use of bronze as a symbol of imperial power is a nice touch. The brutal nature of punishments tells you a bit about the empire, though setting this alongside “good” characters who ostensibly ordered the punishments is confusing. On the other hand, disparate architecture in cities and odd locations for towns seem to exist only to vary the set pieces. Additional development of the world’s details would have gone a long way to making it feel real, but it is developed just enough to set up the story and no further.
  • Not Even a SPOILER: The writing has anachronistic language. This is not a problem if such language is solely for the reader’s benefit, for example, describing something as looking like Swiss cheese even if the world does not have Switzerland (or, perhaps, even cheese). However, when such language pertains directly to a character’s words or thoughts, it really annoys me. Like Nysska getting hit hard and thinking she might have a hairline fracture. That term comes from medical X-ray images, something this world does not have.
  • Barely a SPOILER: Near the end of the book, the investigation unit which the story follows suddenly becomes a true team, though how or why is unclear. A day prior, Raoul was sulking about losing his lady-love to another member of the team. Twenty minutes prior, Percy was being a whiny brat about his cats. Nysska is her typical plank-of-wood self. But suddenly, with no catalyst, they are friends, lively, smiling, laughing, and joking. It’s the end of the book, so I guess we’re supposed to end up here, but the transformation is unprompted, unearned, and feels contrived.
  • Barely a SPOILER: Logical and factual inconsistencies crop up from time to time, prompting me to second guess what I had just read. For example, the crew builds a fire at night before the moon rises so enemy lookouts won’t see them. Now, my experience hiding from enemy lookouts is admittedly limited, but I have made a number of fires, and I don’t understand this rational. Yes, the crew is described as shielding their flames, but in the pitch blackness of night, even a small slip-up would stick out like a sore thumb to a watchful sentry. Besides the fire debacle, there are also factual errors which irked me. Like how the leather armor worn by the main characters is constantly being stabbed through. Armor is historically pretty good at stopping weapons, that is its job after all. What would be the point of wearing armor if it provided such little protection? Illogical things like this really get under my skin.
  • Mild SPOILER: The main character is uninspired and extremely unlikable. In fact, the scene of sexual violence is perpetrated by her against a teammate early on in the novel. The dude is a jerk, yes, but this kind of dehumanizing violence and the description of it makes her a monster with no redeeming qualities. It is possible to have a nasty protagonist, but the reader needs a reason to root for them before and as they grow and improve. There is no reason to like Nysska. I think Dan tried to provide this reason by having her like animals, but it is far too little given the content on the other side of the equation.
  • SPOILER: The twist about Garrit, a bad guy, being Nysska’s brother is obvious, even though Dan tries underhanded tricks to hide it. In fact, Dan commonly utilizes cheap tricks to draw out limited and uninteresting plot lines concerning this story’s mysteries well past their life expectancy.