Iain Hawkes’s Reviews > The Eye of Darkness > Status Update

There were a few good things in this. Grios presenting the 'cause' of the Nihil is well done, even if she doesn't believe it in herself - kind of harkens to authorotarian regimes, where they speak the language of equality and whatnot, but their hypocrisy is clear to see. That, and the horror of the Stormwall expanding, and the RDC's disastarous attempt to breach it.

...idea of the Nihil transitioning to an empire feels out of place, because not only is it yet another empire in a series that's had no shortage of them (Galactic Empire, Rakatan Empire, etc.), but makes them less distinct as a threat.

This still has the problem I've mentioned before - the sense of the story meandering, and effectively being filler, and not just because I know how it ends. I'm not sure if the novel is genuinely trying for moral ambiguity, given Marcion's statements about the Republic, or whether it's just showing him as an opportunistic warlord, but if the former, it really doesn't work. Similar to what I've said elsewhere, the...

Not doing much for me, a lot of it comes off as filler. As in, entire chapters where character X reflects on Y, which is fine in moderation, but not to this extent. A lot of it comes across as meandering. And while not necessarily the book's fault, knowing how the Nihil just crumble by the saga's end, it makes it hard to be invested in the setting at this point in time.

Mixed so far. The writing's pretty basic, but I guess it needs to summazie past events. On the other end, I like the plot developments.