Breath of fresh air to the books I've been reading set in space.
Different yet comfortably fitting in many ways. I look forward to the rest of the books in the series. ( )

More action than my usual read but the characters were great and the plot compelling. ( )

Damn good first book. Can't wait for the rest of the series. ( )

Behind the Throne was one of those books I hadn't heard about and first checked out on NetGalley because the cover was so pretty and because it was under one of my favorite publishing imprints. I've noticed over recent years the covers on books have been getting less catchy and more generic - something that I am actually rather sad about because I love the cover art on novels.

I even took this novel on vacation with me, forseeing a great beach read filled with interstellar intrigue, strong female lead, kickass action and some zinging sarcasm. I mean, all the parts were there! They compare it to Star Wars! This was going to be perfect!

I think what did this in for me was the writing style and execution. We come in mid-stride to some seriously life changing action, and then immediately after our Trackers show off to whisk our heroine to a palace..and then a bunch of other stuff happens that matters but I didn't care about. I didn't really understand why the main character's family was so important, either - even though I feel liek this was explained early on in the novel. I don't know.

I just didn't click with any of the characters, didn't care about what happened to them and generally didn't "click" with the narrator which left this book lounging on my TBR list for almost a year (or a year?) and was generally painful to read. It makes me sad, because everyone else I know loved this book - so I think it was more me than this book that was the problem.

Thank you to NetGalley and Orbit for a copy of this book for review. ( )

Barely 3 stars for me. The pacing is good and I wanted to see what would happen. But one of these will do it for me. The protagonist's early career of 'gun running' is presented as a perfectly cromulent and morally neutral occupation. Oh sure, we've all worked as pirates at some time in our lives. Near the end of the book there is some meting out of justice that also raised my hackles. Kind of interesting though. The universe colonizing by the different powers/cultures of earth was one of my favorite parts.
The subvocalized dialogue interspersed with the spoken dialogue is a fun device but wouldn't work IRL. It's hard enough to understand one conversation, much less two or three. ( )