Reviews

Orca by Steven Brust

mrawdon's review against another edition

adventurous dark funny medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

avery_switch's review

dark funny mysterious medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.75

turnerjo's review against another edition

4.0

I enjoyed the playfulness with narrative and formal conventions over the last two books. It's interested to see characters through a new point if view, especially characters such as Vlad, with whom we've spent so much time. The new narrator is good and, combined with her POV, brings a welcome feminine presence to the series.

cheezvshcrvst's review against another edition

3.0

3.5/5: lots of laughs, reveals, casually wielded wisdoms and knives, but too much exposition. Worth noting that this is a very mature novel in that it is a great sampling of political and economic theories as well as an intro to neurological health, but ultimately this is a Vlad whodunnit caper with Kiera and a few surprises that wouldn’t make sense without the incredible world building Mr. Brust has managed by and through this point in the Vlad series. Eerily enough, as a final thought and an aside on this novel: we all know Fyres was the Trump of Dragaera, right? (Arguable that Fyres was minus the white supremacy and pedophilia.)

geofisch's review against another edition

adventurous emotional funny mysterious tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Six stars

soursock's review against another edition

3.0

Not as good as the previous ones. Not sure what I didn't like about it. But I know what I did like. That ending

wildflowerz76's review against another edition

2.0

3/1/14 - /sigh What the hell? Is it me? I loved the first 5 of this series. So much that when I did my last book ordered, I went ahead and bought the next two volumes (4 books total). I'm regretting that now. So this one still has Savn from Athyra, but he's broken. Maybe it's because I didn't really care about his character in the previous book, but I found this one incredibly tedious. It seemed like a lot of trouble to go through to get Mother's house back when she really didn't seem like, in the beginning, she was going to be able to help Savn at all. I'm putting the next volume in this series away for a while. I already own it, so I'll probably attempt to read it, but it won't be for a while. Here's hoping it's better when I finally get to it.

krakentamer's review against another edition

4.0

So now I'm at the mid-point - Book 7 of the 15 published to this point. This one was another change-up in style from the previous books, alternating first person accounts between 2 characters. For this, the audiobook wisely brought in another narrator to handle the female character's viewpoint. Weirdly, this narrator (Angele Masters) did a fine job in the regular chapters; handling different voices without issue. However, the Interludes were all a conversation between 2 female characters, with minimal to no ... uhhh... "speaking indicators" (I don't know the term - "Tom said... Bill said...") and her voices for these 2 characters were so similar that I had to back-track a few times to make sure I could tell which was which.
The story itself was a crazy-complicated financial house-of-cards whodunnit. Like watching one of those old crime shows the older generation seems to love - full of double-crosses and banking transactions. Probably should've been a little more boring than it was, but I enjoyed it.

nlord's review

adventurous mysterious fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

garretreece's review against another edition

4.0

Not the strongest book in this series, but well written. A change from the usual pacing and plot of the previous books of the series, this is more mystery and caper than action and adventure.

An entertaining note is the description of a credit crisis that closely mirrors the credit crisis caused by the subprime mortgage ruckus in the US this year and the year before; this book, however, was published in 1996.

If you're following the series, of course you'll read this. If you're not, don't start here, start with [book: Jhereg].