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Ocean's Echo by Everina Maxwell
Apr. 22nd, 2023 11:27 amOcean's Echo
3/5. There’s a lot of setup here (too much, TBH) but the usual elevator pitch is something like scifi setting where a militaristic culture has mind readers (oppressed) and architects who can control others (not oppressed), and for reasons the troubled reader nephew of a politician is conscripted and paired with an upright architect officer. They are commanded to soulbond, like you do, but they decide to fake it. Yes, they fall in love.
That’s, like, the first quarter of this book. The plot takes many (several too many) breakneck turns from there. This book is ultimately trying to be about intergenerational trauma. It’s not not about that, but it’s not exactly fulfilling the brief either in between the alien stuff and the pilot stuff and the coup stuff and the culture stuff and the relationship stuff.
Okay, the thing is, this book has two good things going for it: some crisp, skillful prose, and relatedly some very sharp character work. But here’s the problem. It did all this character work – clearly thought out and carefully observed – on a pair of people at the center of this book who are both some of my least favorite archetypes. So if you, very much unlike me, really like dissolute young men who hate themselves and express this by being as obnoxious as possible at all times and turning their many talents to ruining as many things for as many people as possible, then here you go, this is a class A version. Enjoy. I didn’t. Also if you like starched upright rule followers who are deeply blinkered about how their internal moral compass is not aligned with the corrupt system they are inexplicably loyal to, there’s one of those, too. I at least enjoyed that guy half the time.
Maxwell does have something going for her here. I did try to read her first book way back when it was on the AO3, and did not like it, unlike basically everyone else I know. So maybe she’s just not for me. Because this book is doing stuff, it’s just not stuff I like.
Content notes: Some of the consent/nonconsent stuff you would expect from a combination of mind control and military.
3/5. There’s a lot of setup here (too much, TBH) but the usual elevator pitch is something like scifi setting where a militaristic culture has mind readers (oppressed) and architects who can control others (not oppressed), and for reasons the troubled reader nephew of a politician is conscripted and paired with an upright architect officer. They are commanded to soulbond, like you do, but they decide to fake it. Yes, they fall in love.
That’s, like, the first quarter of this book. The plot takes many (several too many) breakneck turns from there. This book is ultimately trying to be about intergenerational trauma. It’s not not about that, but it’s not exactly fulfilling the brief either in between the alien stuff and the pilot stuff and the coup stuff and the culture stuff and the relationship stuff.
Okay, the thing is, this book has two good things going for it: some crisp, skillful prose, and relatedly some very sharp character work. But here’s the problem. It did all this character work – clearly thought out and carefully observed – on a pair of people at the center of this book who are both some of my least favorite archetypes. So if you, very much unlike me, really like dissolute young men who hate themselves and express this by being as obnoxious as possible at all times and turning their many talents to ruining as many things for as many people as possible, then here you go, this is a class A version. Enjoy. I didn’t. Also if you like starched upright rule followers who are deeply blinkered about how their internal moral compass is not aligned with the corrupt system they are inexplicably loyal to, there’s one of those, too. I at least enjoyed that guy half the time.
Maxwell does have something going for her here. I did try to read her first book way back when it was on the AO3, and did not like it, unlike basically everyone else I know. So maybe she’s just not for me. Because this book is doing stuff, it’s just not stuff I like.
Content notes: Some of the consent/nonconsent stuff you would expect from a combination of mind control and military.