Conversation

This is very good and surprisingly playful and fun for something so self-consciously erudite. Looked her up and not surprised she’s a historian. This feels like a history book more than scifi.
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The works building is great but the mannered style is both distracting and confusing with all the characters. And unclear what all the gender bending is for.
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Only at 22%. This is slow going. Fast-paced page-turner it’s is not. The plot seems like an excuse for a leisurely tour of the worldbuilding, with plenty of digressions that serve no real plot purpose. It’s like a rich dessert. Can’t eat too much in one sitting.
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The framing device is the narrator mycroft addressing the far future from the near future. So we’re effectively looking over the shoulder of a history writer. Technically complex and well-executed, but exhausting. Does transform exposition into something else though.
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Ok ground to a halt and gave up. Just can’t bring myself to care about this world and its people. Very skillful, but the overwrought worldbuilding kinda overwhelmed the thin plot a bit too much for me. And all the characters seem like stagey performers. Instagram influencer vibes
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Kinda sad. Wanted to like it. The flying cars idea was cool. If the balance of elements had been better I’d have kept going. I think where it lost me was probably the layers of meta-literary conceits.
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bro the plot does so many things bro You just got to ease into it bro. but there's a lot of world building man. You got to get like halfway through the first book before the plot really is visible
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Oh it's worth it. Things keep changing, the first third of book one you think it's headed in direction X, then it adds in element Y, then in the next book we add in element Z, etc etc.
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