Tiana Dalichov

A frustrating read. A little bit of smoke and mirrors is a great tool of fiction, but too much of any good thing does not make for enjoyable reading.

In this book, everything is wrapped in a thick fog of mystique, even things that the narrator clearly would know are never explained. So much so, that at the end of the book, the setting itself is still a mystery. What happened to the U.S.? Why is everyone speaking Ukrainian? Who’s the emperor? How did the current regime come about? Where did 99.9% of the population go? And so on.

Most of the time reading this book will be spent doubting the motivations of the main characters, and wondering what the hell is *really* going on.

One disturbing element is how stupid everyone seems to be acting. The main character and narrator is several times entrusted to do things she is obviously not qualified to, and trusted to be in control of things she’s obviously not in control of, making the resulting failures dull and predictable affairs.
The sheer stupidity of the people around her makes you think part of the setting is that there’s massive amounts of lead in the water everywhere, making everyone mildly mentally retarded.

At the end of the book, so much is still untold and unfinished that the book feels like an incomplete work. That a book in a series sets up plot lines for future books is fine, but when it becomes so concerned with the future that it forgets to deliver an engaging story, it makes me wonder how much more frustrated reading the author expects us to go through, before she’ll let us know what it’s all about.

As a result, I find myself somewhat resentful at being teased for hundreds of pages, without getting any satisfaction at the end, and the prospects of me getting the next book are not looking great. A shame, because there appears to be an interesting setting with interesting characters somewhere beyond the fog of confusion. If only we had been allowed to see some of it clearly.… (meer)