Sally Strange reviewed The Aeronaut's Windlass by Jim Butcher (The Cinder Spires, #1)
Jim Butcher is too un-self-aware to write far future spec fic, I think
3 stars
Or maybe he's just a dick, I dunno. Certainly the Harry Dresden character reads like a self-insert character and he's a bit of a dick. Anyway, the ups:
Talking cats! Who save the day. And frankly they were written very well. Obviously Butcher knows and loves cats. Could have used more cat action.
Kickass ladies all over the place.
Great airship battle writing. That was fun.
An intriguing setting.
The downs:
The intriguing setting not well-explored or adequately explained. Humanity has been living in spires for at least 2,000 years, and the surface of the planet is basically uninhabitable. Full of strange, dangerous creatures that become maddened by a slight taste of human blood. OK... but why is one spire "Albion" (blegh, read the Book of Koli for why this is barf-worthy) and one spire "Aurora" and why are the clearly stand-ins for the British Empire and the Spanish Empire? …
Or maybe he's just a dick, I dunno. Certainly the Harry Dresden character reads like a self-insert character and he's a bit of a dick. Anyway, the ups:
Talking cats! Who save the day. And frankly they were written very well. Obviously Butcher knows and loves cats. Could have used more cat action.
Kickass ladies all over the place.
Great airship battle writing. That was fun.
An intriguing setting.
The downs:
The intriguing setting not well-explored or adequately explained. Humanity has been living in spires for at least 2,000 years, and the surface of the planet is basically uninhabitable. Full of strange, dangerous creatures that become maddened by a slight taste of human blood. OK... but why is one spire "Albion" (blegh, read the Book of Koli for why this is barf-worthy) and one spire "Aurora" and why are the clearly stand-ins for the British Empire and the Spanish Empire?
In this vein, the power sources in this book are basically magical crystals that seem to have some kind of consciousness, which means that the airships they power can be thought of as discrete sentient beings, which offers intriguing potential for exploring nonhuman awareness and suchlike things, but all that happens is that a girl learns to talk to a ship and the ship is like "My captain is so cool" and the girl is like "Yeah he is" and that's the extent of it.
A bit too long. Action needs pauses sometimes, and there was rather too much time spent with the antagonists of the story. This could have been OK if there weren't so many overlapping protagonist POV storylines interweaving throughout. Edit! Edit!
I don't FULLY regret the time I spent reading it because it was an audiobook, and the narrator did a great job, and mostly I was doing other things at the same time. But if I'd sat down and read it I'd be annoyed.
I can tell where Butcher is going with the sequels, but I'm not going to follow him there - I don't care enough about the characters.