A review by antij
The Golden Princess: A Novel of the Change by S.M. Stirling

2.0

The major problem with this series has been its slow pace. I was ok with it taking its time, especially when they were crossing the country meeting new people and cultures every hundred pages or so, but the so-called "War of the Prophet" killed any momentum this series had. I was wiling to give this series one more chance as it looked that it could be going off into an interesting direction, and while it could still be going in that direction the pace it's getting there is way too slow for me. If anything this book feels incredibly indulgent. If I was being polite, I would say that the author was mostly interested in his world building, but a lot of times it just feels feels like he wants to share with us all the research that he's done. I don't need to know the minutiae in the differences between the japanese feudal system and the european feudal system. The final chapter of the book really doesn't need to be spending pages discussing the difference between the characters' fighting styles, especially when there's no more fights in the book. A chapter was devoted to an Australian king who doesn't make a reappearance in this book and all we learn is that he likes beer. Practically all the characters from the original books are dead by this time. Almost none of the characters that appeared in the past few books appeared in this one and the few that did were not in it for long. That left us with new characters and while the main character was fine. The secondary characters we were forced to spend time with I found completely dull. I am done with this series.