Everina MaxwellRecensioni

I see what all the hyper was about -- fantastic love story, firmly rooted in awkward people not knowing how to bridge a communication gap. I love the world building, the political machinations, the unexpected customs, but the love story's slow unfolding and the crew of characters is the real star here.

Space opera in which the troublesome Tennalhin, rich boy nephew to the Legislator is caught and sent off not just to involuntary military service, but to a permanent roll as the synced reader (mind reader) to the young architect (mind writer) Lieutenant Surit Yeni, a stickler for rules. But Surit is such a stickler for rules that he and Tennal fake the sync because it is not voluntary. And then then things start to go very wrong.
The story is interesting, mostly well placed, the characters have appeal, but do not entirely convince. The backstory timeline of 20 years seems too short for the events it covers. And for a culture in which gender rolls seem to be entirely voluntary, they don't seem to mean anything and yet we are absolutely in a M/M romance. Since neither genitals nor secondary sexual characteristics are described, everything but events are up to the reader's imagination.½

TW: flashbacks to intimate partner abuse, gaslighting

I’m sure there are loads of reviews singing the praises of the (deserving!) leading men, so I’ll leave them for everyone to love on while I talk about our girl Bel.

Highly efficient, dignified ex-space pirate confusing 'personal assistant to Prince Kiem' with 'exasperated sister-figure to that lazy moron, Kiem'? A sweet, slow-burn fondness for Jainan? The whole, “you scared the shit out of me you idiot” bit when she comes to yoink the boys off the mountainside? The whole, “we are not getting this Thean child killed,” bit with the anarchist undergrad she barely knows but adopts on-sight (sidenote: same)? The whole, “lol fuck that lowbrow job offer” bit when she turns down thE EMPEROR just so she can keep chillin with the fool squad because she’s actually a not-so-secret die-hard softie?? ... I’m deeply in love.

Anyway, lovely characters. Great story. I’m excited to see if Maxwell writes anything else in this universe~

Final conclusion: readable, but very meh, and *so* derivative. The plot is silly and convoluted and not very interesting. Every character is just painfully straightforward and bad at subterfuge, except when they're miscommunicating. At the same time, it's not bad bad, and I might have benefited from lower expectations, so giving it one star feels excessive.

Feels influenced by the Vorkosigan books and The Murderbot Diaries, but space is just the scenery and no interesting questions are being asked. I'm disappointed with the relationship tropes; I thought we were gonna talk about grief and second loves, ala Cordelia Aral (who learned and grew and changed from their also very fucked up previous relationships!), but instead we have "Taam is a monster who deserved what he got."

The worldbuilding is one of those cases where the author uses oddball names and oddball genders as a flimsy stand-in for coming up with new and alien cultures. Provenance made me believe that the Hwaeans are obsessed with their ritual objects. Winter's Orbit has ceremonies because That's What Being Royal Is, IDK, Let's Have An Object Handover Party.

At least the names are short. I've decided that Taaaaaam is just the space-spelling of Tom. Fucking Tom.

Tohutult veniv ja ülevoolavalt melodramaatiline. Lugu on isegi täitsa okei, aga peategelaste käitumismallid täiesti ebausutavad ja paneva lakkamatult ohkama.
Soovitan selle vahele jätta ja võtta kohe teise raamatu, Ocean's Echo. Armulugu on enam-vähem sama, aga lugu palju parem ja halelevat ilulemist ja hormoonitiineid õhkamisi kõvasti vähem.

I really liked this. The characters were nice and very distinct. I liked the political back story, for me this was exactly the right level; intricate enough, but not too complicated to easily follow, and not boring. It got a little fantastical towards the end, and it was a little too easily resolved. Both the events and the emotional growth went very quick all of a sudden. But overall, I enjoyed this a lot.

Really nice book, with very distinct personalities and an intricate story. I would almost have given it 5 starts, but I felt it dragged on a bit towards the end. Admittedly, it dragged with lots of action. The action was just too much and too long for my taste.

quite good - a little predictable in places, but fairly novel in others, and a fast-moving plot

This was another one of my series-sampling audio listens, to see if I might want to pursue it in print someday. The verdict: I wouldn’t turn my nose up at it if I were trapped in a room with nothing to read except books from this series, but I probably wouldn’t actively seek it out whilst I’m still being allowed to roam free.

Audio Narration
The narrator is Raphael Corkhill. For the most I thought his narration was fine, and he was pleasant to listen to, but I did have a couple issues. I’ve often complained about narrators who over-dramatize the voices for characters of the opposite sex, but his reading of female characters was so under-dramatized that I often couldn’t tell if a character was female or not until the text made it clear which character was speaking. The distinction between a male versus a female voice is one of the things that helps an audiobook listener distinguish between characters, so this was sometimes a problem for me.

I think the other issue I had was just a result of the narrator attempting to do what the text said. There are a couple characters who are portrayed as speaking with a slight accent that becomes more pronounced when the characters are under some stress or feeling a sense of urgency. The narrator did this, but sometimes I had trouble recognizing the characters at those times. The text does mention character names often enough that I was usually able to keep straight who was talking, though. It just sometimes wasn’t until after the dialogue that it became clear who had said it.

Story
The SF&F group has once again tricked me into reading a romance novel. :) (Ok, I admit I did it to myself, because I avoid reading any info about a book before I start it. I prefer to jump in blindly and be surprised, even if the surprise isn’t always pleasant.) This book is at least 50% romance, probably more. The science fiction aspect was purely setting with very little substance.

The main premise is that war between various planets is avoided through treaties and arranged marriages. Prince Kiem, a man with a history of getting himself into trouble, is unexpectedly commanded by the emperor (his grandmother) to marry a man from another planet, Jainan, whose husband from Kiem’s family recently died in a shuttle accident. He’s not happy, but the marriage is critical for avoiding war, so he goes along with it. Angsty romantic tropes ensue, along with some fairly generic political intrigue.

This is one of those books that relies on characters constantly misunderstanding each other and being incapable of talking things out with each other. In this case, I kind of bought into it under the circumstances, but it’s a trope that unfailingly annoys me. I did enjoy Prince Kiem. I don’t think he was a particularly unique character, but I definitely have a soft spot for the rogue-ish characters with a good heart, and he fits that niche nicely. I kind of liked Jainan, but his internal thoughts were quite frustrating at times. There was background to explain why he was the way he was, but it was still frustrating for me as a reader.

The political intrigue aspects of the story seemed under-developed. I think it was more of a vehicle for the romance than a story in and of itself, although the action did pick up in the second half. Some of the key underlying elements that were supposedly driving the plot, such as the concepts of the auditors and the remnants, were never fleshed out well.

In spite of all my complaints, both the story and the characters held my attention better than I would have expected them to. This story wasn’t really up my alley, but I never felt bored or restless while listening to it. If the second book had stayed with the same characters and explored their lives after all the angsty romance stuff was resolved in this book, I might have been a little more tempted to try the second book, but I took a peek at the description and it looks like it’s another romance featuring different characters, so I think I’ve had my fill of that for now!

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/hugos-2023-the-astounding-award-for-best-new-wri...

It’s another queer space opera romance, where the super politically connected Bad Boy is thrown together with the Good Boy trying to overcome his controversial family heritage, in a world where mind-control skills are just sufficiently developed for the plot, and you can see where it’s going from the third chapter. I liked it more than the previous book though.

A M/M royal marriage of convenience with two rather romantic young men, strangers to each other until the day of the wedding. One was widowed his former spouse a cousin of the other. Misunderstandings, murder, politics, betrayals, space opera. The characters we spend time with are pretty pleasant if not terribly interesting, and gender seems to be a matter of which pronouns are used and what is worn, and in the milieu of the story indicate by wearing either flint for F or wood for M or glass for U. But gender doesn't seem to have any other weight within the book in terms of rolls or expectations and no children are mentioned as being in the palace, at least at any of the events attended or spaces occupied by the main couple.½

I love going into Books blind. The cover suggests one thing, and then the story inside is so different. In this case, I loved it. Is this a space adventure? Yes! But at heart it’s a romance novel. This romance novel is between Prince Keim and Count Jainan, in this space adventure, marriage is a contract and often used to bring two worlds together. With the resolution (galactic contracts) fast approaching the emperor must make sure that her treaty bond with the Thean planet and people is strong. To do that, she must marry their representative to a member of her family. This is a game of politics, but like any good love story it does have a happily ever after. The author can paint a realistic fantasy world, where some things feel like the earth we know, and someplace we don’t, but were named for things missed or remembered. For example, in Iksat, a bear has six legs and scales, but it is still just as deadly as an earth bear. When this book isn’t on Iksat, it’s out in space and it’s full of adventure, political intrigue, a little bit of mystery and a lot of heart. It does have a few slow points where it feels the 400+ page is that it is, but not often the reader wants to get to the happily ever after. The reader wants to know if their assumptions are correct. This was a wonderfully divergent space story that was nothing I was expecting but everything that I needed.

Really good narration.½

Tennal, nephew of an influential legislator, is a 'reader', someone who can pick up thoughts and emotions from the minds of others. Readers are distrusted in society but 'architects' with their ability to control others are acceptable. Tennal is sent into the army to be illegally synced to an architect named Surit. Together they become mentally linked and must find their way through coups and old conspiracies.
A complex and interesting story

It’s not often I can say that an author’s sophomore work is leaps and bounds better than their first but holy crap this was a great read! Politics! Coups! Neuromodification! Romance! I loved every minute of it, so good!

Jainan and Kiem are forced together in a political marriage days before their planetary system is set to renew their treaty with a galactic Resolution. Romance, attempted murders, conspiracies, and more! A fun read.

Kind of a mystery, kind of a romance, light on the actual science fiction aspect of the story. A fun read.

library book read 5/6/2023½

In one isolated planetary system, warring factions developed “Architects” and “Readers”—the former who can command obedience for a short time, the latter who can read minds. Readers are mistrusted and blamed for an attempted coup, but useful synced with Architects to navigate the disturbed space that isolates the system. For the synced Reader, things are less fun: they are always vulnerable to being “written” by the Architect. The ne’er-do-well Reader nephew of the ruler is shipped off to be synced, but encounters a strong Architect who also has a strong moral code, and they agree to fake the sync until the Reader can escape. So it’s a variant on forced bonding, with a lot more politics and a lot more attention to the unpleasant sides of forced bonding, and Maxwell successfully complicates the politics as things go on. Not super tropey—they accidentally fall in love, but, in what is catnip to me, they recognize that the ongoing coup attempt/low-level war they’re in is more significant until stablized. If you like strangers-who-probably-should-be-adversaries-to-lovers and lots of politics, you might enjoy it too.

Loved the romance, would have like a bit more plot.

Loved the romance, would have like a bit more plot.

I loved how the romanced turned out in the second part of the book. The characters are well drawn and their relationship beautiful.

I loved how the romanced turned out in the second part of the book. The characters are well drawn and their relationship beautiful.

This was a pretty entertaining story, and I'm excited to read the follow-up book by this author. While I enjoyed it overall, especially the relationship between Kiem and Jainan, I feel it's easier to articulate the few critiques I had. Really I think it would have been perfect if both the sci-fi aspects and the romance aspects had been expanded juuust a bit further. It felt like the author didn't want to go too far in one direction or the other and got stuck in the middle, but I think both aspects could have been expanded on.

I found it to be pretty slow in the first 60%, which seemed to be building the romance between the two leads but it was glacially slow. And then the mystery plot finally started kicking it up faster, so it felt like more was finally happening as far as plot.

This was kind of marketed as a sci-fi romance but it's really more of a space opera murder mystery with a romantic subplot. The romantic subplot was honestly the best part about it but I just wanted more from this story in all aspects. I wanted more to be said and done about the past marital abuse of Jainan and his healing through Kiem, and I wanted more to be said and done about the colonialism perpetrated by the Empire.

Intense and compelling! When Tennal's aunt has him forcefully recruited into the military, he finds himself in a situation where he's vulnerable and has very little agency -- and he's very determined to exercise whatever power he can.

He was stuck on a ship with his defenses down and there was nothing he could do about it.
They all expected Tennal to be cooperative. It wasn’t as if he had a choice. A shame that he’d never been cooperative in his life.

I found Tennal's methods of mischief-making unexpectedly entertaining. I also enjoyed watching him and Lieutenant Surit Yeni work out how to work together -- Surit’s officially in charge of Tennal but is too honourable to take advantage of Tennal’s telepathic weaknesses and it takes them a while to learn that they can trust each other.

(There's also a political intrigue space opera plot to cause further complications for them.)½