A review by lordenglishssbm
The Betrayal by C.J. Cherryh
2.0
I like some of the ideas, and even the writing itself. It's clean, it's controlled, the dialogue is sharp and expressive, and the characters are vividly drawn. The emphasis on politics was probably more appealing to me than it is to most people (I do reporting work), though it leans too heavily into the everyone-knows-everyone-else-knows mindgames that everyone incorrectly assumes is how politics really functions.
The problem is that it's slow. Like, glacially slow. The plot starts after the first two hundred pages, which I'm almost willing to forgive because what happens in those first two hundred pages is more interesting, more tightly-plotted, more affecting, and more tense than what comes after. No, the real problem is that while the way Cherryh writes her conversations is neat, and it is kind of fun watching her characters try to outsmart each other, she keeps writing the same conversations throughout the whole book. It becomes increasingly tiresome as the book goes on, and it doesn't help that the death of a major character and the shift in focus to a new one, done halfway through the book, kills the momentum of her narrative. To be fair to Cherryh, it was not her decision to split a single book into three volumes, but I struggle to see how that would retroactively make this more enjoyable to read. The long walls of exposition don't help, but given that this is a book set in a larger universe alonside other series which chronologically come before this, I can at least respect Cherryh's attempt to get the reader up to speed.
Taken on its own, I think it would have worked much better as a standalone if it had focused on Justin and ended when Justin and Grant's character arcs ended. It was a natural end point for the book, and it would have shaved one hundred and fifty pages off the length. As it is, the story feels disjointed and incoherent, with a very sudden ending. If you are going to read this book, make sure to track down a version that collects all three volumes.
The problem is that it's slow. Like, glacially slow. The plot starts after the first two hundred pages, which I'm almost willing to forgive because what happens in those first two hundred pages is more interesting, more tightly-plotted, more affecting, and more tense than what comes after. No, the real problem is that while the way Cherryh writes her conversations is neat, and it is kind of fun watching her characters try to outsmart each other, she keeps writing the same conversations throughout the whole book. It becomes increasingly tiresome as the book goes on, and it doesn't help that the death of a major character and the shift in focus to a new one, done halfway through the book, kills the momentum of her narrative. To be fair to Cherryh, it was not her decision to split a single book into three volumes, but I struggle to see how that would retroactively make this more enjoyable to read. The long walls of exposition don't help, but given that this is a book set in a larger universe alonside other series which chronologically come before this, I can at least respect Cherryh's attempt to get the reader up to speed.
Taken on its own, I think it would have worked much better as a standalone if it had focused on Justin and ended when Justin and Grant's character arcs ended. It was a natural end point for the book, and it would have shaved one hundred and fifty pages off the length. As it is, the story feels disjointed and incoherent, with a very sudden ending. If you are going to read this book, make sure to track down a version that collects all three volumes.