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weeses's review
4.5
loveeeeeeeeeing these. its rare that i actually like a space battle but somehow scott makes it succinct and still engaging. and i adore how smoothly the plot clips along
freya_amber's review
3.5
This was more plot focused than I like. I didn't feel any pull to finish it, but I also never felt like giving up on it. I was disappointed that the romance mostly developed off-page.
mar's review
adventurous
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
another fun ride :) a bit slow to start, but once the plot pivots from "magical school" to "courtly heist/jailbreak" it really picks up. i loved seeing Silence interact with other women and unpack some of her not-like-other-girls internalized misogyny.
on the flip side - idk if that's just me, but i'm a biiit apprehensive of the fact that the Hegemony appears to be (though very loosely) inspired by Middle Eastern cultures, when its primary defining characteristic is "deeply oppressive of women", yknow?
on the flip side - idk if that's just me, but i'm a biiit apprehensive of the fact that the Hegemony appears to be (though very loosely) inspired by Middle Eastern cultures, when its primary defining characteristic is "deeply oppressive of women", yknow?
Content Warnings
some brief gender essentialism
reasie's review
3.0
This starts real, real slow. I was frustrated with all the summarization, and also with a sort of short-handing of the character moments, that felt more like telling me "they love each other" than showing it.
It picks up once our heroine is inside a harem, which I think is what the author was more interested in telling, and she at least has the "not like all the other girls!" heroine acknowledge that maybe she should have more female friends.
The ending was better than the beginning. I was 100% convinced I'd not look for the third book for 3/4 of this but after the ending, well, if it fell in my path I'd pick it up.
It picks up once our heroine is inside a harem, which I think is what the author was more interested in telling, and she at least has the "not like all the other girls!" heroine acknowledge that maybe she should have more female friends.
The ending was better than the beginning. I was 100% convinced I'd not look for the third book for 3/4 of this but after the ending, well, if it fell in my path I'd pick it up.
kaa's review
4.0
I enjoyed this book even more than the first book in the trilogy. It manages to overcome the typical middle-book tedium by focusing on a brand new adventure that, while instrumental in the larger story arc, also stands well by itself. I thought that this worked well as a vehicle to advance the world-building and characterization without slowing the plot.
I continue to really like Silence as a main character, and think that this book did a great job of giving her further depth as an interesting, flawed, and relatable character. I also love that this book was so heavily focused on women and their lives within this oppressive society. My absolute favorite part was when another women asks Silence, at the time going by a pseudonym, "You don’t like women very much, do you, ‘Jamilla’?" The moment was a beautiful interrogation of both the character's attitudes and the attitudes that are so common across SFF, even in books featuring a "strong female character" as the lead.
A couple minor complaints: I do wish Silence's husbands were more deeply characterized - at the moment, Denis seems rather thinly sketched and it's hard for me to get a feel for Julie's personality at all. However, I do enjoy the view of their relationship from Silence's perspective, and the clear affection between all of them.
Probably my biggest issue with the book was that there was way too much exposition reviewing the events of the last book at the beginning of this one, which was especially tedious as I read this immediately after the first. Second,
Finally, I want to reflect a bit on what I sometimes felt was overuse of the phrase "the pilot" to describe Silence. This sometimes felt unclear to me, but I think at least part of this is because I would default to thinking that this referred to a male character if there was even potentially another pilot in the scene, which I think is very revealing of our social gender bias around certain occupations. In any case, I don't know whether pointing that out was the author's intention in choosing that phrasing, but it was certainly effective for me, as well as being very effective in conveying the character's view of herself.
I continue to really like Silence as a main character, and think that this book did a great job of giving her further depth as an interesting, flawed, and relatable character. I also love that this book was so heavily focused on women and their lives within this oppressive society. My absolute favorite part was when another women asks Silence, at the time going by a pseudonym, "You don’t like women very much, do you, ‘Jamilla’?" The moment was a beautiful interrogation of both the character's attitudes and the attitudes that are so common across SFF, even in books featuring a "strong female character" as the lead.
A couple minor complaints: I do wish Silence's husbands were more deeply characterized - at the moment, Denis seems rather thinly sketched and it's hard for me to get a feel for Julie's personality at all. However, I do enjoy the view of their relationship from Silence's perspective, and the clear affection between all of them.
Probably my biggest issue with the book was that there was way too much exposition reviewing the events of the last book at the beginning of this one, which was especially tedious as I read this immediately after the first. Second,
Spoiler
I felt as though Radiah's suspicion and hostility toward Silence was left unresolved. To be honest, I was sort of expecting her to be behind the conspirator they were feeling wary of earlier on, because that also felt like a loose end. It is possible that these things will appear again in the next book, but I would rather have seen them dealt with in this installment, because it felt anti-climatic that they didn't end up leading up to anything.Finally, I want to reflect a bit on what I sometimes felt was overuse of the phrase "the pilot" to describe Silence. This sometimes felt unclear to me, but I think at least part of this is because I would default to thinking that this referred to a male character if there was even potentially another pilot in the scene, which I think is very revealing of our social gender bias around certain occupations. In any case, I don't know whether pointing that out was the author's intention in choosing that phrasing, but it was certainly effective for me, as well as being very effective in conveying the character's view of herself.
tikimoof's review
4.0
A fairly fun romp. There was less visualization of traveling through Purgatory, which is a sadface.
These books are pretty short and are basically adventure novels, so there's not a whole lot to get offended by, characterization-wise. Silence is the only really fleshed-out character, so there's not much to say about the poly relationship. Chase Mago and Balthazar are mostly archetypes, and half of the book was Silence in a harem so there was even less space to flesh them out.
This isn't a bad thing - it means even less space to run into disagreements between gender theories of the 1980s and 2020's. That said, there are like three lines of genetic gender assignment that would be pretty not-great today (but then again it's in a pretty misogynistic society so maybe it still passes a little? But either way, not great).
The stuff about Silence not being very good at being a tradfem woman was interesting, more so her getting called out on it by another woman. There are some deeper questions to be asked about whether women could present Silence's powers and remain more feminine, but (a) I think it's also tied to the extremely masculine nature of the jobs she takes and the power they convey and (b) it's not that kind of book.
A lot of deeper societal questions lurk underneath - and I don't think many of the answers about the worldbuilding reflect badly on Scott, even when viewed through a 2020's lens - but I'll just enjoy a queer-positive space romp from before I was born.
These books are pretty short and are basically adventure novels, so there's not a whole lot to get offended by, characterization-wise. Silence is the only really fleshed-out character, so there's not much to say about the poly relationship. Chase Mago and Balthazar are mostly archetypes, and half of the book was Silence in a harem so there was even less space to flesh them out.
This isn't a bad thing - it means even less space to run into disagreements between gender theories of the 1980s and 2020's. That said, there are like three lines of genetic gender assignment that would be pretty not-great today (but then again it's in a pretty misogynistic society so maybe it still passes a little? But either way, not great).
The stuff about Silence not being very good at being a tradfem woman was interesting, more so her getting called out on it by another woman. There are some deeper questions to be asked about whether women could present Silence's powers and remain more feminine, but (a) I think it's also tied to the extremely masculine nature of the jobs she takes and the power they convey and (b) it's not that kind of book.
A lot of deeper societal questions lurk underneath - and I don't think many of the answers about the worldbuilding reflect badly on Scott, even when viewed through a 2020's lens - but I'll just enjoy a queer-positive space romp from before I was born.
lib_britannia's review
4.0
Scott continues to entertain in this sequel, delving deeper into the world of non-mechanical space travel and technology while beginning to pluck at the subtly laid feminist threads from the first novel. This series has continued to surprise me by delivering far more than I ever expected from a little-known 80s pulp sci-fi paperback about a woman with a cheesy name and two husbands.
One star knocked off for the sometimes too-long deep dives into the inner workings of the tech and the way ships function. After a certain point it begins to feel a bit tedious, like listening to a young child tell you from the highest level of excitement about their current most favorite thing in expansive and excruciating detail.
One star knocked off for the sometimes too-long deep dives into the inner workings of the tech and the way ships function. After a certain point it begins to feel a bit tedious, like listening to a young child tell you from the highest level of excitement about their current most favorite thing in expansive and excruciating detail.
celiaedf12's review
3.0
A different kind of novel to the first, but also very fun - we start with Silence at her magus training, but then move to an infiltration and heist storyline.
rhodered's review
5.0
Kick ass heroine. Good looking husbands (yes two, but nothing salacious happens). Great female and male secondary characters. Tons of adventure. A thoroughly satisfying book that stands on its own even if you haven't read the first in the series. No cliffhanger. Great, fun science fiction of particular interest to women.
By the way, this is definitely SF and not fantasy. Yes I know the cover shows something that looks like magic, and some characters are magi. That said, it's all described in a scientific way.
By the way, this is definitely SF and not fantasy. Yes I know the cover shows something that looks like magic, and some characters are magi. That said, it's all described in a scientific way.
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