Embers of War by Gareth L. Powell
Jul. 4th, 2019 03:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lightreadsEmbers of War
3/5. A few years after a war between human factions ends with the genocide of an alien species, a sentient ship doing search and rescue stumbles into a conflict that might reignite the war.
Entertaining space opera that does not quite have the technical chops to pull off what it is trying to do – rotating first person POV. The voices needed to be that bit more distinct to make it work, the characters a notch deeper. By far the most interesting to me is the ship, a former military vessel which resigned its commission after the war. The ship's low-simmering conflict about its capacity for violence, while still not really understanding the scope of its own actions, is pitched just right.
The rest of this is interesting enough, and I suspect the trilogy as a whole will be contemplating themes of human violence and the price of peace. Nothing here really lit me on fire, though.
3/5. A few years after a war between human factions ends with the genocide of an alien species, a sentient ship doing search and rescue stumbles into a conflict that might reignite the war.
Entertaining space opera that does not quite have the technical chops to pull off what it is trying to do – rotating first person POV. The voices needed to be that bit more distinct to make it work, the characters a notch deeper. By far the most interesting to me is the ship, a former military vessel which resigned its commission after the war. The ship's low-simmering conflict about its capacity for violence, while still not really understanding the scope of its own actions, is pitched just right.
The rest of this is interesting enough, and I suspect the trilogy as a whole will be contemplating themes of human violence and the price of peace. Nothing here really lit me on fire, though.