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A review by timinbc
The Kingdom of Liars by Nick Martell
3.0
First book? OK. Second will be better, there's a good base here.
Slow start, but picked up well.
Running fake duels to make a living is maybe a tribute to Dumas but it's still ridiculous.
Page 35: Angelo has grey eyes; oh no, my pet peeve; but it wasn't for the usual reasons (i.e. to signal that This Is The Good Guy), and actually turned out to matter.
Michael keeps meeting people at random just when he needs them. That happens in first books.
What's with Dammit paying him 5 suns a day to say hello?
If you are going to have magicians breaking a moon, YOU HAVE TO TELL US WHAT THEY DID! Especially when you don't otherwise show any evidence of magic that works much beyond arm's length. And the crashing moon pieces didn't matter, except for one being used as a plot point that could easily have been handled 20 other ways.
We never find out why his memories are shredded, just hints. This feels like one of the things that should NOT be held back for the next volume.
Big buildup re the Girl in Red, and when we get the reveal, meh.
The Mercenaries are implausibly strong. This could lead to plot problems later.
Amazingly incomplete with a dozen pages to go, but he pulled it off decently, even if it was a bit of a rush, and nothing he did there was too much of a stretch, although it was one of MANY occurrences of Michael making a split-second decision with no prior thinking.
Despite crediting two copy editors and two proofreaders, there are some oopsies. "Lead" for "led" twice, some misplaced apostrophes, and several occurrences of "me and my friends went ..." from a narrator whose grammar is otherwise perfect. Is this a tribute to Ben Aaronovitch's Peter Grant, who does exactly the same thing?
Martell's going to be good, but he's not there yet. I'll read #2 to see if he is progressing.
Slow start, but picked up well.
Running fake duels to make a living is maybe a tribute to Dumas but it's still ridiculous.
Page 35: Angelo has grey eyes; oh no, my pet peeve; but it wasn't for the usual reasons (i.e. to signal that This Is The Good Guy), and actually turned out to matter.
Michael keeps meeting people at random just when he needs them. That happens in first books.
What's with Dammit paying him 5 suns a day to say hello?
If you are going to have magicians breaking a moon, YOU HAVE TO TELL US WHAT THEY DID! Especially when you don't otherwise show any evidence of magic that works much beyond arm's length. And the crashing moon pieces didn't matter, except for one being used as a plot point that could easily have been handled 20 other ways.
We never find out why his memories are shredded, just hints. This feels like one of the things that should NOT be held back for the next volume.
Big buildup re the Girl in Red, and when we get the reveal, meh.
The Mercenaries are implausibly strong. This could lead to plot problems later.
Amazingly incomplete with a dozen pages to go, but he pulled it off decently, even if it was a bit of a rush, and nothing he did there was too much of a stretch, although it was one of MANY occurrences of Michael making a split-second decision with no prior thinking.
Despite crediting two copy editors and two proofreaders, there are some oopsies. "Lead" for "led" twice, some misplaced apostrophes, and several occurrences of "me and my friends went ..." from a narrator whose grammar is otherwise perfect. Is this a tribute to Ben Aaronovitch's Peter Grant, who does exactly the same thing?
Martell's going to be good, but he's not there yet. I'll read #2 to see if he is progressing.