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matt_doyleSo. Book tracking. While on vacation, I read A Confusion of Princes by Garth Nix, which was... an enjoyable disappointment? It was a fun read, about a nigh-immortal genetically engineered noble boy in a vast interstellar empire, in which a mystic priesthood grooms thousands upon thousands of candidates for their mastery of mechanical, biotechnological, and psionic tools, seeing who is fit to be chosen as Emperor. Of course, the Princes scheme and try to kill one another constantly, because a new Emperor ascends once every twenty years.
So, our hero, a budding sociopath raised to great power and startling ignorance, must learn about his world in order to survive, face intrigue, betrayal, and military action, and at some point learn to be a human being.
It felt very much like Frank Roger Herbert Zelazny's Nine Princes of AmberDune. And that's... not a good thing, especially not in a book this short. The worldbuilding was imaginative if derivative, but it was very rushed, as was the episodic plot, because they had to cram this epic universe and bildungsroman into far too brief a space to support it. Nix's preoccupation with the brilliant Roger Zelazny is very plain here, as it was in the end of his Keys to the Kingdom series, and it's just as mismatched to a YA audience. Seeing the influences at work in the story, I was able to predict all the plot twists in the second half based on two details revealed in the first.
The book was fun, and I was interested, but I couldn't get invested, and I desperately wanted to give the world more legroom -- at least a trilogy, to handle the proportions of the story.
So, our hero, a budding sociopath raised to great power and startling ignorance, must learn about his world in order to survive, face intrigue, betrayal, and military action, and at some point learn to be a human being.
It felt very much like Frank Roger Herbert Zelazny's Nine Princes of AmberDune. And that's... not a good thing, especially not in a book this short. The worldbuilding was imaginative if derivative, but it was very rushed, as was the episodic plot, because they had to cram this epic universe and bildungsroman into far too brief a space to support it. Nix's preoccupation with the brilliant Roger Zelazny is very plain here, as it was in the end of his Keys to the Kingdom series, and it's just as mismatched to a YA audience. Seeing the influences at work in the story, I was able to predict all the plot twists in the second half based on two details revealed in the first.
The book was fun, and I was interested, but I couldn't get invested, and I desperately wanted to give the world more legroom -- at least a trilogy, to handle the proportions of the story.
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Date: 2012-07-03 10:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-07-03 12:59 pm (UTC)