Ryan

This book was a bit slow to get into; the unique first person narration and cultural oddities of gender in the Radch made for a confusing start, but it builds to an exciting and very satisfying final third.

A fresh and different take on a galaxy spanning sci-fi revenge story; definitely worthy of the Hugo!

In one word: tedious. Gave up with a hundred pages to go, but thought about it a hundred pages earlier. Nothing dispels tension like a heroine who accomplishes every challenge put before her not through her wits, but because she is psychic and sees everything before it happens. Nice try, but needless to say I won't be checking out any of the other books in this series.

Let me first say that I love sci-fi, I love fantasy and I respect the place “Dune” has in the history of these genres. That said, I found the settings confusing (is it a future of interstellar travel, lasers and shields or is it a medieval fantasy of castles, dukes and sword fighting?), the characters flat and archetypal (he basically tells you who is good and who is bad at the beginning) and the “intrigue” provided no tension whatsoever (when you know who the traitor is and what bad guys plan, what's the point in reading anymore?). I think this world has some interesting potential, but I can't help but think how this story world be told/structured if it were published today. I really wanted to like this book, but I kept hoping for something bad to happen to Paul or for him to fail at something just once to break up the monotony and his one-dimensional character. My dad loved this book when he read it 40 years ago; I truly wish I could feel the same way.

To be honest, I was super disappointed by this book. The fleet tactics were interesting, as was the speculation about how a never ending war changes people, but the characters were such one-dimensional caricatures that I couldn't take any of them seriously. They were either eager sycophants, brainless and defiant arguers or a hero that is always right, true, honorable and perfect while carrying on a ridiculous internal monologue attempting to convince the reader he's an actual human.

If you like fleet scale space battle with actually interesting characters you might care about, you'd be better off looking elsewhere.