Status Updates From A Desolation Called Peace (...

Politics in The City with Eight Antidote is fantastic. Poor 11 yr old trying to navigate politics & the reality of politics interfering with (& drawing out) a war. Politics at the warfront with Nine Hibiscus & her antagonistic subordinate-captain is also great. Language issues with alien 1st contact is cool, tho feels a bit out of place. Station reps showing up for politics only in the last 15% is jarring.

👏 more 👏 space 👏 politics 👏

Definitely picked up further in. Politics went all-in, alien first-contact dilemma is interesting, & themes finally appearing. But every so often there’s an over-explanation of not only things we already know from last book, but I’m pretty sure has already been shown earlier this book. It drags me out of the flow when it happens. Suspect this will be a hard fight for 4 stars, possibly down to 3, we’ll see.

I think the plot is interesting, but there's so much more Telling from every POV than there was in book one, so I wonder if it was editor/publisher pushback? Odd choice after the first book literally won awards. Book 1 made me feel not smart enough (in a good way, like if I were keeping up I was super smart). Book 2 makes me feel like the author assumes I'm really, really dumb.

I praised AMCE for its lack of handholding & over-explanation, so it's really weird that the sequel starts out with so much of it. 3 POVs and all of them are (over)explaining things we know from book 1 in more detail than we ever got in book 1. I assume it's for people who forget between books, but it feels too dumbed down. We picked things up the first time, we can pick things up again.

I've been taking a pause on this since I started unicorn hunters, hopefully I'll come back to it after