Books

_A Matter of Oaths_, Helen Wright

I picked this up following Jo Walton's review on Tor.com.

There is almost nothing remarkable about this book except in the way that it displays complete competence in everything except making me interested in it.

All the sentences have meaning and are there for a reason. People speak in understandable conversations that have relevance to what just happened. Characters are easily differentiated and have their own ways of speaking and thinking. There is a plot which can be retold. Technologies are mentioned or demonstrated before becoming plot-significant.

But.

The history of this space-opera universe must be Dune-deep, but none of it is explained. The political structure is both simple and ridiculous. A major early plot point (who are the Others?) is discarded and never mentioned again. Several things that all the characters take for granted are never explained at all. There is no depiction of a civilian economy to justify or support the semi-military Guild that seems to hold a monopoly on spaceship crewing. (There's one convoy-escort mission.) A central enabling technology is depicted blurrily, at best. The relationships of consciousness, identity, memory and love seem to depend on a theory which is never explained and does not match anything I've ever heard of or experienced -- it's really quite alien to me.

And.

There are too many coincidences. The massively-multi-planetary human civilizations seem to have a total population similar to a large village, considering the people we see and meet over and over again. There's not a single sensawunda moment in the entire book.

Books

_A Matter of Oaths_, Helen Wright

I picked this up following Jo Walton's review on Tor.com.

There is almost nothing remarkable about this book except in the way that it displays complete competence in everything except making me interested in it.

All the sentences have meaning and are there for a reason. People speak in understandable conversations that have relevance to what just happened. Characters are easily differentiated and have their own ways of speaking and thinking. There is a plot which can be retold. Technologies are mentioned or demonstrated before becoming plot-significant.

But.

The history of this space-opera universe must be Dune-deep, but none of it is explained. The political structure is both simple and ridiculous. A major early plot point (who are the Others?) is discarded and never mentioned again. Several things that all the characters take for granted are never explained at all. There is no depiction of a civilian economy to justify or support the semi-military Guild that seems to hold a monopoly on spaceship crewing. (There's one convoy-escort mission.) A central enabling technology is depicted blurrily, at best. The relationships of consciousness, identity, memory and love seem to depend on a theory which is never explained and does not match anything I've ever heard of or experienced -- it's really quite alien to me.

And.

There are too many coincidences. The massively-multi-planetary human civilizations seem to have a total population similar to a large village, considering the people we see and meet over and over again. There's not a single sensawunda moment in the entire book.