Is it wrong of me to say this novel was so very obviously a YA novel? I don't want to sound like I'm looking down on YA novels, because I do think there are some real gems in the genre, but Bonds of Brass was merely your typical Young Adult novel and I couldn't help but find it disappointing for that.

I think the relationship between the main characters will likely be the main reason most readers consider reading this, so I'll just start with my thoughts on that first. The romance was…fine? No, okay, it was actually pretty boring and felt a bit perfunctory, but it was pretty standard YA fare so I feel like I shouldn't judge it too harshly. There was kissing, there was mutual pining, there were heartfelt confessions of love, there were feelings that had developed over long years off-screen and which we were told about at length, yet not enough chemistry on the page to get me invested.

The worldbuilding was essentially an afterthought, but that's fine; it was not the focus of this novel. I didn't care too much about Ettian or Gal, sorry, but I did like Wen, who shows up maybe halfway through the novel and who I am obligated to like for being a teenaged girl with a tragic past and a tough attitude. She is not quite interesting enough to be memorable and her inclusion did not entirely feel necessary, but I liked her. Ettian's moral dilemmas were fun, and I also liked the twist at the end of the novel, which promised to create so much tension between the two leads. BONDS OF BRASS gets an extra half star just for that ending. ( )

Warning, there is a homosexual relationship in this book and it may offend some readers. My only complaint is that the author has written about this relationship in a very clumsy manner. The relationship between the two young men is important to the story as in, may ways, the story is about relationships and decent between the two male characters (Ettian and Gal). The most interesting character is Wen and I wish that we had more of her back story. We get a lot of 2 dimensional characters in this book as the story is mainly action driven. This is the first book of a Trilogy and I hope that some of these secondary characters appear in the second book.
I have notices that a lot of homosexual themes are appearing in Science Fiction Stories and many fine books are being written by Lesbians. My personal favourite author is Becky Chambers. Science Fiction has always been at the forefront in presenting social issues in their stories.
The down side is that this book could have used a good editor. The book starts off pretty well, but, soon the writing goes down hill. In some places there is too much detail and in other not enough. While I could not put the book down when I first started reading I got pretty bored mid-way through the book and was really disappointed at the end. I hope that this book is a set up for the second one in the series, as this is really not a good stand-alone book.
While I enjoyed parts of this book I think that it may be better appreciated by a much younger audience than the one I populate. ( )

Ettian's life literally came crashing down when the Umber Empire invaded his world. Now he's a gifted cadet in a military academy trying his best to be the best. His roommate (and secret crush) is Gal, but when things start to go somewhat wrong Ettian discovers that Gal is the heir to the Umber Empire and there are people who want his head. Now they are going to have to survive and find a way to be themslelves and to find a place for each other in their worlds.
And then they find an ally who makes them question some of their plans.
It was twisty and interesting and I enjoyed it but sometimes it was a little too easy to put down. ( )

For the first couple of chapters of Bonds of Brass, I was settling in for an enjoyable, four-star read: a pulpy, Star Wars-inflected space opera in which a young military cadet, Ettian, finds out that his best friend (and maybe boyfriend), Gal, is secretly the heir to the empire responsible for the death of Ettian's parents and the destruction of his whole society. Emily Skrutskie kicks off the novel with a starfighter skirmish that's a lot of fun to read, and throughout Bonds of Brass she writes some decent action-adventure scenes.

But.

But.

Look, it's the 2984th month of the pandemic. I wasn't asking a lot of this book: just for it to be a fun and escapist read with some queer romance and maybe some laser swords or something. My needs aren't extravagant! But this is a lazily written book, as if Skrutskie decided that people would pick it up solely on the promise that it would give them the romantic relationship between Star Wars' Finn and Poe that they'd wanted to see, only thinly-veiled. Why, then, bother to put any craft into it if you know the marketing will help you find a ready fanbase?

That lack of craft starts to become apparent after those first few chapters, and the whole book becomes steadily more exasperating after that. There's absolutely no chemistry between Gal and Ettian, with Ettian thinking a lot about the fact that he likes Gal but never really showing it through his emotions or actions. Why did they ever like one another? Honestly, having read all 300+ pages of this book, I'm fucked if I know, beyond "Ettian liked that one paper Gal wrote for a class that one time that argued for minimising civilian casualties."

And maybe I'm being reductive here, but that seems less compelling than the fact that Gal's parents are, again, responsible for the death of Ettian's parents and the destruction of his whole society.

None of the actions or reactions of the POV character, Ettian, made much sense, particularly in light of the end "twist" (which is so clunkily signposted that I figured it out around about chapter 5 or 6—out of 31).

Nor did the actions of most people whom Gal and Ettian encountered. The plot depends on a lot of people whom we're told are battle-hardened veterans being shockingly gullible, if not outright stupid, and one character whom we're repeatedly told is a pacifist, the galaxy's best hope for peace, acting like an outright sociopath.

Add in the facts that Skrutskie adopts an attitude towards imperialism which could most charitably be described as muddled, displays a real limited understanding of trauma or politics, and emphasises "blood" as justifying people's claims on power in ways that are highly uncomfortable, and you end up with a book that I can't recommend. I won't be reading the rest of this trilogy—for all those reasons, and because I'm quite certain that I can already predict how the third book will end.

Disappointing. ( )

Skrutskie, Emily. Bonds of Brass. Bloodright Trilogy No. 1. Del Rey, 2020.
If you judge a book by how well it fulfills its author’s obvious purpose, then you have to give Emily Skrutskie’s Bonds of Brass high marks. She wanted a story in the tradition of Star Wars with royalty to be rescued, space battles, palace intrigue and revolution. Done. She wanted a breathless gay romance that would stay well within PG-13. Done. But. For me, the book was never quite as appealing as it was to many of its reviewers. I wish Wen, the roguish woman our two protagonists pick up along the way, was more central; I thought she was the most original character. The book presents conflict between love and duty, and conflict between competing duties, but none of the characters think very deeply about them. Finally, I wish Skrutskie paid more attention to the world-building of her two empires and to the technology her characters employ. I rather longed for David Weber to help her with the battle scenes. Still, if gay romance in a galactic empire space opera is your thing, you could do worse. ( )