Empress of Forever

Another book where the major voice is the main character psychoanalyzing herself. There's slightly more excuse for it here that in many books but still it means whenever you're in danger of empathizing with her she steps in and does it for you. Combine that with merely ok worldbuilding that throws too much ultratech around for you to care about any of it and at 80% I check out because I have stuff I could reread that is much better.

This is a very imaginative book and it pushes boundaries between sci-fi and fantasy. I think it's a fantasy disguised as sci-fi. There are cool elements like the order of the cyborg monks, the pilots of Orn, The Cloud and Zang, the Pirate Queen (who was my favorite character).??
There were some downsides that kept me from enjoying it more, like:
- the overuse of metaphors/imagery: descriptions were too abstract most of the time for my brain to picture locations and even character appearance.
- some incomprehensible action scenes: I had difficulty visualizing and understanding what was happening.??
- there were no clear rules for the world: what were the limits of space travel? how things and people could change sizes and shapes???
- I couldn't see a sense of threat in the story. Nobody seemed to be in real danger because everyone was so overpowerful, including The Empress.??
- Characters' motivations were unclear to me: what were their goals?
??- What happened in the end?? Did Earth exist? Was it all a simulation?? What happened to the Empress of the future??
- Why the Empress created Viv simulation???
- Who created The Cloud??
- Who were The Bleed????
So, I feel like I should have been enjoying more than I have. The premise was cool, but I felt it was overdone and got lost in the abstract world.