A review by adamantium
Antiphon by Ken Scholes
3.0
I can't tell if it's a virtue that this was such a slow burn. By the end of this book, the entire premise is barely reconcilable with where we started. But I've been bored in so many places along the way that I think a book could have come out somewhere here.
For what it's worth, not super clear where things are at now, but the second half of this book went completely bonkers and I need to continue and see where we go from here.
I think that this series really strains credulity in three places:
1. Multiple people have set up wheels-within-wheels-within-wheels chessmaster gambits over decades that somehow went off exactly as planned despite the intercession of numerous literally unpredictable events/forces.
2. There are like 10 different nonverbal languages here of fairly intense nuance and subtlety, and they are used often enough that everyone involved should really realize that these are happening.
3. The Machtvolk go from underground, suppressed faith to having built schools and shrines (yes some were already there) and many new structures, etc. in what would seem to be what, a few months? A little more time could have passed here, honestly.
There are others. Scholes loves repeating words and phrases (lamps, stars, moonlight--you name it, it gutters), and hitting story beats over and over. (Vlad's story is important and also interminable. Petronus was interesting just about until he understood his dreams.)
All that said I can't put it down. What is even going on? Is this series actually delivering on nothing being as it seems?
For what it's worth, not super clear where things are at now, but the second half of this book went completely bonkers and I need to continue and see where we go from here.
I think that this series really strains credulity in three places:
1. Multiple people have set up wheels-within-wheels-within-wheels chessmaster gambits over decades that somehow went off exactly as planned despite the intercession of numerous literally unpredictable events/forces.
2. There are like 10 different nonverbal languages here of fairly intense nuance and subtlety, and they are used often enough that everyone involved should really realize that these are happening.
3. The Machtvolk go from underground, suppressed faith to having built schools and shrines (yes some were already there) and many new structures, etc. in what would seem to be what, a few months? A little more time could have passed here, honestly.
There are others. Scholes loves repeating words and phrases (lamps, stars, moonlight--you name it, it gutters), and hitting story beats over and over. (Vlad's story is important and also interminable. Petronus was interesting just about until he understood his dreams.)
All that said I can't put it down. What is even going on? Is this series actually delivering on nothing being as it seems?