A review by colossal
Liquid Crystal Nightingale, Volume 1 by Eeleen Lee
2.0
In a far future where humanity has largely abandoned our home solar system, humans live in the solar system called the Archer’s Ring on a planet orbiting the star Gachala. On a terraformed planet there are two main cities, the wealthy and first-colonized Cabuchon and the industrial and manufacturing hub of Chatoyance. But humanity is under threat from the malevolent and encroaching Artisans, deeply alien creatures on the edge of the system, and their actions and ongoing threat is having a destabilizing influence on the human settlements.
Pleo Tanzer is the daughter of the only survivor of the most recent Artisan atrocity. She's also semi-voluntarily part of an artificial enhancement project that would eventually leave her classified more as equipment than employee and under pressure from authorities and peers to conform. But the enhancement process has already claimed the life of her twin sister, so she has no intention of finishing the process. Amid her plans to get away from Chatoyance she gets caught up in politics and plots and framed for murder.
There are a vast quantity of ideas going on in this book. I'm reminded strongly of early [a:China Miéville|33918|China Miéville|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1243988363p2/33918.jpg] books. Idea and plot dense, and daring the reader to keep up while dazzling at every turn. Unfortunately, that's not this reader, and I spent most of the book extremely confused as to what was going on. Extremely short chapters (some only a page or so) and viewpoint hopping through several characters, most of whom with opaque motivations, all make for a choppy ride.
The world that the author has built is fascinating and painstakingly detailed, so it's a wonderful place to inhabit, but I could barely follow the plot and didn't get most of the characters at all. Towards the end of the book I was realizing just how much I was not understanding the book and then it ended abruptly, and for me at least, completely unsatisfactorily.
Disappointing.
Pleo Tanzer is the daughter of the only survivor of the most recent Artisan atrocity. She's also semi-voluntarily part of an artificial enhancement project that would eventually leave her classified more as equipment than employee and under pressure from authorities and peers to conform. But the enhancement process has already claimed the life of her twin sister, so she has no intention of finishing the process. Amid her plans to get away from Chatoyance she gets caught up in politics and plots and framed for murder.
There are a vast quantity of ideas going on in this book. I'm reminded strongly of early [a:China Miéville|33918|China Miéville|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1243988363p2/33918.jpg] books. Idea and plot dense, and daring the reader to keep up while dazzling at every turn. Unfortunately, that's not this reader, and I spent most of the book extremely confused as to what was going on. Extremely short chapters (some only a page or so) and viewpoint hopping through several characters, most of whom with opaque motivations, all make for a choppy ride.
The world that the author has built is fascinating and painstakingly detailed, so it's a wonderful place to inhabit, but I could barely follow the plot and didn't get most of the characters at all. Towards the end of the book I was realizing just how much I was not understanding the book and then it ended abruptly, and for me at least, completely unsatisfactorily.
Disappointing.