A Transposed Critical Opinion

[apostle_of_eris]

I enjoy and strongly support con art shows. A place where anyone can exhibit is vital. Even at the worst, I think of the classic lament about the death of vaudeville: "There's no place to be bad any more." [attributed to George Burns

Comments

[athenais]

I'm glad she wrote it because I enjoyed reading the book very much. I love the characters and the world the way I love Georgette Heyer's characters and world. But the plot is minor and unoriginal.

[kaffy_r]

Whereas it drew me in from the first page, didn't feel hackneyed or clichéd in the least, and, for me, was so good that I just finished reading it again. Ah, well.

[lydy]

So, this song doesn't use any original notes. I've heard them all before...

Seriously, I liked the book. I didn't adore it, but it is doing some interesting things with unusual juxtapositions. The young prince coming of age combined with empathic ruler is not typical. Maia's consistent refusal to follow up on his vengeful desires is unusual in this structure. I adored the very real presence and power of the bureaucracy, something too seldom seen in stories of empires. The mixture of magic, elves, and steampunk is, again, an unusual set of juxtapositions. It is also gorgeously written, but in some ways the smooth, clean, elegant prose almost glosses over these very deliberate juxtapositions.

I did vote for it first for the Hugos. It was a close run between that an Ancillary Sword. I'm not sure I"m happy with my first and second rankings, but I don't think I'll change them

[apostle_of_eris]

Interesting.
There's more agreement than not with my overall impression. The writing was truly outstanding, but every 50 or 100 pages, through most of the last half of the book, I wondered when anything was actually going to happen.
But people want different things from their books.
((This candid observation has nothing to do, of course, with the fact that in the unlikely event that I seriously pissed off all three of these commenters it might not require an entire first class stamp to mail my remains home.))