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lightreads ([personal profile] lightreads) wrote2019-07-04 03:19 pm

Embers of War by Gareth L. Powell

Embers 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.