A review by catbooking
The Steel Seraglio by Louise Carey, Mike Carey, Linda Carey
2.0
The middle and the end were the best parts of the book. The middle was very weak, almost made me stop reading. It was not a new weaknesses just one that became apparent once the excitement of action slowed down.
While I am a fan of skilled people being epic good at what they do, it does not make a very exciting or realistic story. When the story hinges on ‘the good guys’ being super skilled at what they do, it begs the question as to how those ‘good guys’ wound up in the mess that needs solving in the first place.
If we put the plot armor aside there is still the issue of world-building. This is supposed to be set in an Arabic nation, either real or imagined, yet there is very little about the world that is Arabic. There are Sultans instead of Kings and camels instead of horses but that is about it. The narrative language is modern and the dialogue is modern. We get a few Increate thrown in here and there, but that doesn’t really make the setting original and doesn’t add to the story.
The last thing that bothered me about the story, and it does not necessarily speak to the quality of the book as much as to the quality of the message,
In summary, not a waste of time but not really anything unique.
While I am a fan of skilled people being epic good at what they do, it does not make a very exciting or realistic story. When the story hinges on ‘the good guys’ being super skilled at what they do, it begs the question as to how those ‘good guys’ wound up in the mess that needs solving in the first place.
If we put the plot armor aside there is still the issue of world-building. This is supposed to be set in an Arabic nation, either real or imagined, yet there is very little about the world that is Arabic. There are Sultans instead of Kings and camels instead of horses but that is about it. The narrative language is modern and the dialogue is modern. We get a few Increate thrown in here and there, but that doesn’t really make the setting original and doesn’t add to the story.
The last thing that bothered me about the story, and it does not necessarily speak to the quality of the book as much as to the quality of the message,
Spoiler
is how the women did things differently. Sure they went all democracy, not really a unique approach to stories that overthrow monarchs, but they were not really a democracy. People voted but the decisions were made by a few skilled individuals who were not elected and shored up by the violent power of one individual who was very good at being violent. So not really a government by the people and not really as pacifist as they would like it to sound. So at the end of the day the women won because they were better at being men than the men were.In summary, not a waste of time but not really anything unique.