A review by a_boy_c
Nethereal by Brian Niemeier
3.0
I liked the pacing of the book and I found the setting / characters to be interesting and unique. Overall, I think it works as a holiday / commute read but falls a bit short of hitting hugo award levels. I've taken off a few stars for 2 main reasons:
1) A number of times the author referenced 21st century items which didn't fit at all with the setting (set hundreds of years in the future with no mention of earth). Why would there be cars or soft drinks? For such an otherwordly space opera, I found these references took me out of the world Brian was building.
2) Because of the fast pacing, things felt confusing at times and some things about the world building didn't make sense. It would have been nice if the author spent a bit more time with elaborating on the universe as well as all the theology and especially on how the 9 circles of hell worked. It just seemed the internal logic seemed to be bounce back and forth.. not to mention the fact that the book went back and forth between normal space adventure and supernatural horror story.
1) A number of times the author referenced 21st century items which didn't fit at all with the setting (set hundreds of years in the future with no mention of earth). Why would there be cars or soft drinks? For such an otherwordly space opera, I found these references took me out of the world Brian was building.
2) Because of the fast pacing, things felt confusing at times and some things about the world building didn't make sense. It would have been nice if the author spent a bit more time with elaborating on the universe as well as all the theology and especially on how the 9 circles of hell worked. It just seemed the internal logic seemed to be bounce back and forth.. not to mention the fact that the book went back and forth between normal space adventure and supernatural horror story.