A flawed masterpiece. Narrator also isn’t that great. While I like his voice, his accents left a lot to be desired.
With a bit of editing, this COULD have been a masterpiece. Im going to start with the negative stuff because I can’t get it out of my head and then move on to the good stuff. As it is, the things that it does well are brilliant with some of the most spectacular twists and character moments I’ve ever read. On the other, there are HUGE sections where nothing is happening and there’s no clear direction for where the story is going, followed by a big set up for a follow up story that I’m assuming is the mainline series? Until that last bit I didn’t even know this was a prequel. It makes a few of those plot threads feel unresolved in what I thought was a stand alone story.
I want to talk for a moment about the story structure. Most books have a beginning, a middle and an end. This book has a beginning, a middle, an end, then a middle, an end, and then a beginning, in that order. It’s weird. I think it’s also a big reason people say the pacing is off because the book feels like it’s ending about halfway through, only to kind of meander along for the last half. I don’t think it’s without purpose since I absolutely love the last half and was far more engaged than I was at the beginning, but I see why it wouldn’t be that interesting for some.
The themes in this book of honor, obedience, grief, guilt, shame, etc. are done spectacularly. I felt everyone one of them was tackled with perfection. I won’t talk to much about it, but I only recall crying ever during two books, and this one made me cry twice. It just caught me completely off guard when I felt so connected with these characters and their struggles. Maybe it’s because I have a baby coming in a few days and the father in me is connecting with the story of these parents trying to protect their family. Anyway, it’s great.
Weirdly the book starts off kind of bad. The names are all very similar and it’s so hard to keep track of who is who. They also will call people mother and father or titles in other languages and it makes it really hard to follow when I’m already struggling with learning their names. On top of the name issue, I think Nomoru’s story is far less interesting in the first half and it almost feels like it’s a book written for preteens like a kid school drama. Then again, it’s probably for that reason that I was so taken aback at the sudden shift into an extremely adult story partway through. In a good way.
The world building kind of stinks here. We spend huge sections in “lessons” about the world, its cultures and governments, and I just tune out. I really don’t care about the people in these other nations that we never see. Other stories will kind of present these cultures organically through the story, this one gives you a lecture on them. I don’t know why it’s necessary and I think these giant lessons could have been cut and the story would have been better for it.
To avoid ending on a negative note though, I’ll say that there are few stories that are going to stick with me the way this one does. The book was self published and I think that’s the only way a story like this could have been told, flaws and all. I could do without the exposition dumps and set ups for the sequel series, but aside from all that I think it’s one of the greatest character and family studies I’ve ever seen in a work of fiction.