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Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City
3/5. In fantasy Rome-ish, head of the imperial engineers accidentally ends up running things during a siege.
This is either brilliant or bankrupt, and . . . I just don't know?
I was delighted by the first 2/3 of this. It's doing that 'unlikely outsider hero takes charge' trope, with bonus engineering nerdery and a breezey, irreverent style. And I said to my wife that it was elevated by the flickering glances it gave to race, and the narrator's colonized status.
And then it took a turn and existed, briefly, on the very sharp edge of that knife – the colonized and the colonizer and mite and right and power. The sort of edge where there is genuinely no right decision to make. And I leaned forward and went 'ooh,' and I was so ready to be all in.
And then it just . . . doesn't. The knife withdraws, the narrator makes a barbed comment, there's some weird penis stuff, and we're done. I'm not mad he's not a hero – it's not that book – but I am mad that it . . . isn't anything? Like, I finished this and thought, a little angrily, what the fuck are you for, then? In a way I wouldn't for, say, a romance novel with much less to say about race and power. Something in the promise of this book, and that promise withdrawn, it just really got me. Also, ( spoiler )
3/5. In fantasy Rome-ish, head of the imperial engineers accidentally ends up running things during a siege.
This is either brilliant or bankrupt, and . . . I just don't know?
I was delighted by the first 2/3 of this. It's doing that 'unlikely outsider hero takes charge' trope, with bonus engineering nerdery and a breezey, irreverent style. And I said to my wife that it was elevated by the flickering glances it gave to race, and the narrator's colonized status.
And then it took a turn and existed, briefly, on the very sharp edge of that knife – the colonized and the colonizer and mite and right and power. The sort of edge where there is genuinely no right decision to make. And I leaned forward and went 'ooh,' and I was so ready to be all in.
And then it just . . . doesn't. The knife withdraws, the narrator makes a barbed comment, there's some weird penis stuff, and we're done. I'm not mad he's not a hero – it's not that book – but I am mad that it . . . isn't anything? Like, I finished this and thought, a little angrily, what the fuck are you for, then? In a way I wouldn't for, say, a romance novel with much less to say about race and power. Something in the promise of this book, and that promise withdrawn, it just really got me. Also, ( spoiler )