Book #8: Incarceron, by Catherine Fisher
Mar. 20th, 2011 10:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
grav_ityI am so, so glad I'm done this book and can now get on with my life.
It suffered, I think, from too much muchness. It was a period piece, it was sci-fi, it was weirdly steampunk, and it moved around so quickly that sometimes it was hard to remember what time you were in. It was a study of politics, a study of what humans will do if you force them, a study of love and family dynamics, a study of religion and history and the dangers of being stupid, but didn't manage to get into any of them effectively.
This is a personal thing, I know. I know lots of people who really like the book. I just...didn't. It dwelt too much on setting and not enough on plot or characters. I appreciate good worldbuilding as much as the next person, but this just seemed like nothing else happened, because we were so busy having things described to us all the time.
(And...was the Queen really a sorceress? Was there magic too, on top of everything else? Because that's even MORE crazy.)
I really wanted to like Claudia. Or Finn. Or Attia. Or, heck, even Keiro. But I didn't. I did like Jared, but that shouldn't surprise anyone.
There's a sequel. I don't plan to read it.
All that said, there was a lot of effort in this book. And I can see how, if I had different tastes, I would have liked it. But I can't love everything, so we'll give it a 7 out of 10 and move on to "The Iron Witch".
It suffered, I think, from too much muchness. It was a period piece, it was sci-fi, it was weirdly steampunk, and it moved around so quickly that sometimes it was hard to remember what time you were in. It was a study of politics, a study of what humans will do if you force them, a study of love and family dynamics, a study of religion and history and the dangers of being stupid, but didn't manage to get into any of them effectively.
This is a personal thing, I know. I know lots of people who really like the book. I just...didn't. It dwelt too much on setting and not enough on plot or characters. I appreciate good worldbuilding as much as the next person, but this just seemed like nothing else happened, because we were so busy having things described to us all the time.
(And...was the Queen really a sorceress? Was there magic too, on top of everything else? Because that's even MORE crazy.)
I really wanted to like Claudia. Or Finn. Or Attia. Or, heck, even Keiro. But I didn't. I did like Jared, but that shouldn't surprise anyone.
There's a sequel. I don't plan to read it.
All that said, there was a lot of effort in this book. And I can see how, if I had different tastes, I would have liked it. But I can't love everything, so we'll give it a 7 out of 10 and move on to "The Iron Witch".
