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Oof, about what I said in my review of book 1...

For one thing, there are A LOT of sentences like "she nodded to the young Male in the hall". Like, the author has decided to use "Male" and "Female" where one might expect "man" or "woman". I've never liked the latter convention, and the former is certainly no improvement. Also, book one claims Shola is a matriarchy, but now that we're there it seems pretty dubious. Nearly every single organization is led by a man, afaict. And oh boy are there a truly superfluous number of organizations! The women have very little agency, main character Carrie gets sedated against her will "for her own good" SO MANY TIMES. Carrie and Kusac are essentially nobility with not a lot of work to do or responsibilities, but they act so put-upon the whole time. There's like an entire legion of bodyguards surrounding them, and they're constantly getting exempted from nearly every hardship because they're so special. There's a culture of religious extremists living in the desert who definitellllyyyy aren't a stand-in for some kinda horrible stereotype, nope! The government runs mandatory psychic indoctrination sessions that were supposed to be onboard with. And finally, it could've easily been half as long and lost nothing, because it's ridiculously repetitive!! I'm probably forgetting a bunch of complaints just because of it being so long.

There are still some interesting novel aspects that I appreciated. Psychic bonds that bend two people's very different genomes towards each other. A group of people voluntarily outcasting themselves from existing societal structures to build a better way. No polycule YET but the groundwork is laid for one.

I don't think anybody knows about this one! It has like no web presence, we gotta fix that.

Like almost all the media I consumed as a kid, I found a book in this series at a garage sale and picked it up on a whim. It probably wasn't even book 1... Of course, after that book I voraciously scavenged every garage sale and thrift store around until I found the rest. It was easily one of my very favorite series growing up. Recently, I've been on a kick of ruining (for myself) everrryyyything I ever loved as a kid. None of it has ever aged as well as one would hope, but I'm very happy to say this series is looking likely to be an exception to that.

The characters are pretty relatable. Maybe a little bit one-note, which is what a lot of reviews complain about. I would argue however that there's a lot of them, not a lot of book, and plenty of (enormous) sequels to do character development in. The plot might be a teeny bit rushed too, and/or sorta squeezed aside to make even more room for dialogue. Oh yeah, don't forget, this is also a romance! Between like... everybody, eventually lol.

But forget literally ALLLLLL of that, because the worldbuilding is absolutely choice, topnotch, no notes. And if half of what I remember about the sequels all pans out, this series is also way ahead of its time on decent representation too. We'll see! I'll probably have something to say about it after I pick up the next one from Bramble Books.

I didn't grow up in this kind of environment, so I can't really review this book with the full context one would need. However, I did really like it! The writing is sharp and snappy. It feels kind of short, shorter than it actually is, but in a good way. Chuck's style of writing has always really appealed to me in the one genre I knew him from, it's really neat to see how it translates to horror. Turns out, really well! Things are stated explicitly and nothing is unnecessarily dwelt upon. It's like the opposite of a Joseph Fink novel lol. Note that I do like those too, this is just a very refreshing departure from that.

The premise is really unique too, I loved it. In the future, whenever I'd usually try to (poorly) explain the unity of means and ends, from now on I'm just gonna tell people to read this book instead.

I will say though, that I'd have liked to know more about Saul's missing piece.

@sin_free_for_00_days@sopuli.xyz Well, I only first learned Shavian even existed when somebody advertised this Lemmy community (@shavian@lemmy.world) 2 weeks ago, if that tells you anything lol. I'd say I finally managed to stop needing a cheat sheet after about 1.5 weeks of halfhearted semi-daily practice? EDIT: Oops, definitely did NOT mean to actually tag the group! Federation is too powerful lol!!

I'm finally just fluent enough in Shavian script English to start reading this, it doesn't really take that long surprisingly. Only a few pages in so far, and @LillyPip@lemmy.ca this book already rocks!