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The swan Riders by Erin Bow
Mar. 8th, 2018 10:01 pmThe Swan Riders
3/5. Sequel to The Scorpion Rules. Low tech road trip with one character trying to learn how to be an AI and another AI character trying to re-learn how to be in a non-networked human body. Also potential nuclear annihilation.
Less whimsical than the prior book, and thus also less effectively horrifying. Which is a stylistic comment, but also a literal one – expect 90% fewer goat jokes by volume, and also 80% less torture. I’m not thrilled with how the queer love interst was shuffled off stage, but the boy that she has complicated platonic stuff with got to run around and do all sorts of things. And there’s something . . . unfinished about this duology. Which makes sense, as the thematic statement of this book is a shifting version of “peace achieved through terror is not peace at all,” which is a starting argument, not an ending argument.
But Erin Bow can really, really write, you guys. And Scorpion Rules went with me through some very hard weeks. The thing I couldn’t manage to say in my prior review is that Scorpion hurt me in a way I particularly needed in that particular time. Impending death. The dread. The laughter. So I’ll forgive the sense of lingering dissatisfaction I have with this book and how I think it didn’t quite fulfill the promise of Scorpion.
3/5. Sequel to The Scorpion Rules. Low tech road trip with one character trying to learn how to be an AI and another AI character trying to re-learn how to be in a non-networked human body. Also potential nuclear annihilation.
Less whimsical than the prior book, and thus also less effectively horrifying. Which is a stylistic comment, but also a literal one – expect 90% fewer goat jokes by volume, and also 80% less torture. I’m not thrilled with how the queer love interst was shuffled off stage, but the boy that she has complicated platonic stuff with got to run around and do all sorts of things. And there’s something . . . unfinished about this duology. Which makes sense, as the thematic statement of this book is a shifting version of “peace achieved through terror is not peace at all,” which is a starting argument, not an ending argument.
But Erin Bow can really, really write, you guys. And Scorpion Rules went with me through some very hard weeks. The thing I couldn’t manage to say in my prior review is that Scorpion hurt me in a way I particularly needed in that particular time. Impending death. The dread. The laughter. So I’ll forgive the sense of lingering dissatisfaction I have with this book and how I think it didn’t quite fulfill the promise of Scorpion.