Dangerous To Know

3,5 stars, I suppose. Breed is a mix of some gigantic lizard monster and a human, a bit of a dickbag, really. Raised by an evil gang boss mother does that. One thing leads to another and he ends up as the slave of a monk type of guys, with a crazy hobo and a little girl who looks like a rat as their companions. Shit happens. To be honest, part of it was actually fun and had a few giggles, but I don't really understand where this is going or what the author is trying to do here. Aaaaand the pacing of it wasn't great. More on that later. Before I start talking more I will have to point out the gimmick of the book. It's written in first person and because of reasons we technically never find out if Breed is a man or a woman. Now some people are already going on Tumblr-style yass kween sessions to express how this is representation for the pan-fluid demigenders who are so oppressed by society. Now to me, that's bullshit. (No, I don't need anecdotes from teen girls about how they are totally specialgenders in the comments, thanks, bye.) In my opinion it's really just a gimmick. I have no idea what purpose it serves to go out of your way to do this. Lets be real here, it's not like fantasy literature doesn't have female characters doing crazy ass shit (the authors who pretend just want to get attention and to earn a pretty penny with the “nobody before me wrote them strawng female character”). Whatever, I generally actually prefer old men characters, so there is that. Breed will be referred to as a he. Because it is a first person narrative we literally read the story as told by Breed, with his own words. Why does it matter? Because this thing is written in such a weirdly thesaurus kind of way that sometimes it is downright jarring with what we learn about Breed. Yes, it is mentioned that he got tutored and such, but many of the things he does are just so bloody practical that I doubt he would wax on poetically about some random shit. He breaks the blade off of a priceless historic sword because the pommel has jewels and he doesn't want to carry the whole thing to sell. Don't tell me someone like that would blabber on about nothing with ridiculously pompous words. Most of the time it's okay, it's fine, but sometimes it was a tiny bit irritating. I'm not even sure if it's intentional or the author went a bit over the top. The “use unnecessary purple prose because serious books for smart people have that” snobbery is finding its way into fantasy, so there is that. My other problem that kept me from giving it a better rating is that for such a short book there were relatively long parts of slower stuff, but in some places there is just a lot and quite a few story lines are already introduced. It's a trilogy, how will the rest be? I'm not feeling the whole story's flow at this point, it's more like going on a nice walk, just to burst into random sprints through crazy. Because of that I feel the weight of the situation is harder to buy as well. There are serious situations that didn't have too much impact because it was just not as well-paced as it should have been. I'm convinced this can be solved later, though, with a bit more experience. It happens. What I liked though was how the tone wasn't happy, but it didn't try to just press down on you. Breed can joke. Hard living situations doesn't have to turn characters into completely serious people and books can benefit from tonal shifts like that. It stops them from becoming what disliked about [b:Mortal Engines 287861 Mortal Engines (The Hungry City Chronicles, #1) Philip Reeve https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1352173057s/287861.jpg 3981652] recently; just one heavy mass of misery. All in all this was a fine book. I will definitely be reading more of the series to see how it all gets resolved, though I will probably pick up other things before. It definitely has potential, I just don't feel all the things about it are perfectly executed. There is nothing wrong with that, though. It's not a bad choice of a read if you want to pick something relatively quick. Have a nice day and know the dangers of this one!