Agree wholeheartedly with what you wrote. My review went "DNFed at 55%. Everything I dislike about Fantasy as a genre. Lots of superfluous world building delivered in info dumps. Intrigue that doesn’t intrigue. Romance between enemies. I am not the audience for this. "
Yeah, and I think part of it was me not being the audience.. but I just really struggle with the writing at a holistic level.
I've seen a lot of reviews for it that seemed to think "dang, if she only had more space this would have worked, it should have been a novel instead" - and I think those are completely wrong!
There's frequently so much more accomplished in short stories than what she does here. It's not about de Bodard not having the space to create an imaginative world, believable romances, character depth, investigations of themes, etc - it's just that she doesn't do it at all. More space would make this worse, not better.
Agree wholeheartedly with what you wrote. My review went "DNFed at 55%. Everything I dislike about Fantasy as a genre. Lots of superfluous world building delivered in info dumps. Intrigue that doesn’t intrigue. Romance between enemies. I am not the audience for this. "
Yeah, and I think part of it was me not being the audience.. but I just really struggle with the writing at a holistic level.
I've seen a lot of reviews for it that seemed to think "dang, if she only had more space this would have worked, it should have been a novel instead" - and I think those are completely wrong!
There's frequently so much more accomplished in short stories than what she does here. It's not about de Bodard not having the space to create an imaginative world, believable romances, character depth, investigations of themes, etc - it's just that she doesn't do it at all. More space would make this worse, not better.