iffer's review against another edition
3.0
Another interesting peek into the world of the Tensorate. I wasn't as tied to this one, partially because it was told in transcripts and personal letters.
ohboysidd's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
laindarko2's review against another edition
adventurous
mysterious
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
pageglue's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Following the dramatic events of The Red Threads of Fortune wherein a wild conspiracy is uncovered, a bureaucrat for the Protectorate (empire) is ordered to investigate what happened and deliver a report. The trouble is that higher-ups are restricting her access to information and censoring transcripts of interviews conducted with the witnesses. Her disillusionment with the Protectorate only drives her to dig deeper, and what she learns will change the course of her life.
This book was… awesome? It’s an epistolary novel, told in transcripts, letters, reports, and diary entries. I’ve never really loved a book told in that style (Christopher Isherwood’s A Meeting by the River being my favourite). In my experience, formal documents make for cold storytelling, and personal writing can add distance that blurs tension and action. There’s a scene where a character is writing in real time in the middle of a dangerous situation and it’s like, Dude, escape! Write this down later!
Having said that, this book did a great job of revealing the secrets and mysteries layer by layer. The bureaucrat is a new character and she’s very charismatic, and the antagonist was slimy and fun to hate.
Something I found interesting was the question of who the truth belonged to. Because this was a government conspiracy, the bureaucrat is trying to expose the truth for the public. But there’s a character for whom the deepest, darkest secret is extremely personal, and exposing that truth could lead to losing something important to them. If you stumble upon my truth, what’s your responsibility? Do you owe me privacy? What if it’s at the sake of others getting hurt?
Interesting, interesting.
This book was… awesome? It’s an epistolary novel, told in transcripts, letters, reports, and diary entries. I’ve never really loved a book told in that style (Christopher Isherwood’s A Meeting by the River being my favourite). In my experience, formal documents make for cold storytelling, and personal writing can add distance that blurs tension and action. There’s a scene where a character is writing in real time in the middle of a dangerous situation and it’s like, Dude, escape! Write this down later!
Having said that, this book did a great job of revealing the secrets and mysteries layer by layer. The bureaucrat is a new character and she’s very charismatic, and the antagonist was slimy and fun to hate.
Something I found interesting was the question of who the truth belonged to. Because this was a government conspiracy, the bureaucrat is trying to expose the truth for the public. But there’s a character for whom the deepest, darkest secret is extremely personal, and exposing that truth could lead to losing something important to them. If you stumble upon my truth, what’s your responsibility? Do you owe me privacy? What if it’s at the sake of others getting hurt?
Interesting, interesting.
sybyll's review against another edition
4.0
No two books by Neon Yang are remotely the same. They each delight in different and surprising ways. For me, the best way to enjoy them has been to jump in and trust that Yang will lead you on a journey with a really surprising and often unsatisfying but pretty cool ending.
xjackyx's review against another edition
3.0
This book was written in a different format, through journal entries and documents, which was really quite interesting to read.
megapolisomancy's review against another edition
1.0
I really enjoyed _The Red Threads of Fortune_, then thought _The Black Tides of Heaven_ was rather a boring prologue (the two were published simultaneously and the idea is you can read them in either order, but there you go), and now this one a pretty complete failure. The epistolary format rendered its narrator flat and characterless and the narrative itself repetitious and shallow. Felt like a short story (Rider's bit, the most engaging part of the book) padded out to novella length (barely - between the excessive margins, the slight page count, and the redacted sections, I'd love to know the actual word count here).
tunatanga's review against another edition
dark
mysterious
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.75
just_one_more_paige's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.0
The third novella in this fantasy sci-fi series that my partner and I are reading out loud to each other at night...and it was both our favorite of the series so far!
As the story opens, there is a major incident at a research facility in a remote area of the Protectorate. When the tragedy at the Institute was discovered, it was a slaughterhouse, and all experimental subjects had escaped. Found on-scene were two outlaws, part of the Machinist group: Akeha and Rider. A Tensor, Sariman Chuwan, is appointed to investigate and the reader is presented the narration of events through her collectioned evidence, what (highly redacted) materials the Tensorate gives her (clearly inside of a cover-up) and her own journal entries, as she describes her (less and less legal) attempts to find the truth.
The events of this novella take place after the first two, sequentially, but the novella itself is very different in style and events covered. While the first two novellas really focused on Akeha and Mokoya's coming of ages/relationships/stories, this takes us into a wider perspective, looking at the bigger world that they are in and the actions (offenses) of the Tensorate and the Protectorate. It really shows the underhandedness and power-grabbing and icky sneakiness and experiments/cover-ups that are rampant in all ruling groups/classes everywhere (IRL and in fiction). Reading the discoveries at the Institute, and the unfolding of the investigation, in this sort of dossier-style presentation made for a really fun reading experience. And since we also got to read Chuwan's personal journal entries/reflections, the rest was in a much more conversational and casual tone than the writing of the first two novellas - not better or worse, but definitely more entertaining (fun and snarky) and less artistic, as writing goes.
There are definitely some more emotional items explored in this novella. The reason Rider was looking through the Institute in the first place is to try and find their missing twin, and in general learning about what all the children/twins were used for in that facility, was difficult. Even though it was told in glossed-over descriptions, the reader can make inferences. Same with the animals that were spliced and created and experimented on as well. Horrible. And the graphic descriptions of the state of the...remains...at the Institute after the incident are stomach-churning. (A note here: there seemed to be a big narrative build-up to a face of between Rider/Akeha and one of these huge dual species naga-raptors, but it never actually gets addressed, even in passing, on page - which feels like a loose end in a fairly disappointing way, as it seemed to have been a major incident). In relation to all this, the good old “cover up” and “mislead” and “bribe” tactics coming into play here from the Protectorate side of things, with a classic “rogue investigator going after the real story," plot was an entertaining way to learn all this tough information.
Now that we know what the goal of the Tensor experiments at the Institute was, and the level of success they achieved, I really hope this storyline is wrapped up in some way in the final novella, because otherwise, this whole third installation was a major outlier and will leave the reader with lots of hanging ends. And so, on to the finale of this series and our hopes that this interesting, but still requiring a good ending to pull it together and leave a really solid final impression, the series gets the wrap-up it needs.
“Why interrogate me, if you will not believe what I say? I am telling you the truth. Do not dismiss me just because it is not what you want to hear.”
“My greatest fear is not that I will find some sort of half-animal creature, wild-eyed and untamed. It is that I will find a genuine monster: someone perfectly human, but with a heart of stone, turned cruel from enduring years of cruelty. What if they are not a tool enslaved by the Protectorate but a willing blade? What if they are proof of what I should have known all along - that there is something broken inside me, only waiting for the right environment to bring it out?”
“Generosity will buy you more than a lifetime’s worth of gratitude.”
Content Warnings
Graphic: Blood, Injury/injury detail, Violence, Child abuse, Death, and Grief
Moderate: Child abuse, Animal cruelty, Confinement, and Animal death
Minor: Torture