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A review by raven_morgan
The Mirror Empire by Kameron Hurley
5.0
Review eARC received from Netgalley.
Here's a secret for you: I burned out on epic fantasy several years ago. I was just *over* seeing the same old tropes, the same old worlds, the same old characters.
And then Kameron Hurley's "The Mirror Empire" was announced. And I warily thought, hey it's Kameron Hurley, maybe this one is going to be different.
(As an aside, if you've not read any of Hurley's online essays, you damn well should)
Some of those tropes are here, of course, but Hurley uses them in such a way that I did not care one bit. The world(s) that she has created are fascinating, with an awesome (and at times, more than a little disturbing) magic system.
I was there at the use of blood magic, and the carnivorous trees and plants, but then Hurley tossed in another layer: the way she looks at gender and gender roles through her fantasy world is just amazing.
I did have some issues balancing the immensity of the world and cast (which may be entirely by fault as a reader), and it did feel at a few times like there were simply "too many notes", in terms of too many things happening, with not enough time given for the reader to get a handle on it all (which again, may be entirely my fault as a reader, and you'll probably see a hundred reviewers who had no problem with it at all). I'm planning on re-reading this, now I have a handle on the world, and I suspect it'll be much easier upon re-reading to keep it all sorted in my head.
If Goodreads allowed half stars, I would probably in all honestly give this one four and a half stars on the first read, simply because of some of the issues I had keeping some characters sorted, but I'm choosing to round up to five stars instead of down to four, simply because the world is so damn awesome.
Really looking forward to seeing whatever Hurley chooses to write in this world, and I suspect this is going to be showing on some awards ballots in the future (and deservedly so).
Recommending to anyone and everyone.
Here's a secret for you: I burned out on epic fantasy several years ago. I was just *over* seeing the same old tropes, the same old worlds, the same old characters.
And then Kameron Hurley's "The Mirror Empire" was announced. And I warily thought, hey it's Kameron Hurley, maybe this one is going to be different.
(As an aside, if you've not read any of Hurley's online essays, you damn well should)
Some of those tropes are here, of course, but Hurley uses them in such a way that I did not care one bit. The world(s) that she has created are fascinating, with an awesome (and at times, more than a little disturbing) magic system.
I was there at the use of blood magic, and the carnivorous trees and plants, but then Hurley tossed in another layer: the way she looks at gender and gender roles through her fantasy world is just amazing.
I did have some issues balancing the immensity of the world and cast (which may be entirely by fault as a reader), and it did feel at a few times like there were simply "too many notes", in terms of too many things happening, with not enough time given for the reader to get a handle on it all (which again, may be entirely my fault as a reader, and you'll probably see a hundred reviewers who had no problem with it at all). I'm planning on re-reading this, now I have a handle on the world, and I suspect it'll be much easier upon re-reading to keep it all sorted in my head.
If Goodreads allowed half stars, I would probably in all honestly give this one four and a half stars on the first read, simply because of some of the issues I had keeping some characters sorted, but I'm choosing to round up to five stars instead of down to four, simply because the world is so damn awesome.
Really looking forward to seeing whatever Hurley chooses to write in this world, and I suspect this is going to be showing on some awards ballots in the future (and deservedly so).
Recommending to anyone and everyone.