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A review by katyanaish
The Native Star by M.K. Hobson
3.0
This book is really tough for me to review.
Let's start with this: the world was fabulous. It was unique and fascinating. Flavors of steampunk, and the varieties of magic were cool. So this author gets an A for world-building.
Now let's chat about everything else. First and foremost:
What the fuck is going on in this book?
It is strange to reach the end of a book and feel like you understand less about what is going on than you did in the first couple of chapters. I think that the combination of the fact that this is the author's first book AND that this plot seems to have complicated, tangled layers where no one is really what they seem... it just adds up to too much. The ending was, for me anyway, a hot mess filled with "What just happened?" "What are they doing with it?" "Wait, am I supposed to know these people / that organization?" and then at the end, some big powerhouse Dude steps out of ... I don't know, a closet or something, leaving me baffled and wondering who the hell that guy is supposed to be. The world Hobson built is intricate and detailed, and there are organizations vying for power, but the lines between them (or lack of lines, or in some cases lines that turned out to not be lines at all) were confusing.
The characters
Emily Edwards, the heroine, was cool. She was smart, brave, quick on her feet and generally able to handle herself. She was pretty solid as a heroine. But she made a mistake in the very beginning - a mistake that is a tangent to the story, by the way, and has nothing to do with the overall plot - and it feels like she spent the entire rest of the book paying for it. It got tedious. But that aside, I liked Emily.
Dreadnought Stanton, the hero, was... an asshole. Sorry, but he did not impress me in any way. From his smug condescension early in the book (which, despite everything - including Emily saving his life on several occasions - he NEVER got over... he was still keeping vital things from her so she wouldn't worry her pretty little head over it, all the way at the very end of the book), to his bossy know-it-all attitude, to his refusal to share any info without having it pried from his smug face (and even then, he would only utter as little as he could manage before he changed the subject), he really really grated on me. He did the WRONG thing CONSTANTLY, whether it was his attitude towards Emily or his trust for IDIOTS, or just his stupid plan in the first place, and yet was always insisting that he knew best.
Their romance - if you can even call it that - didn't work for me. Because he's a douchebag. And because he never at any point actually indicated any real interest in her. I didn't buy it. And having Emily virtually throw herself at him in the end, to beg him to be with her, was appalling to me, and did a lot to undermine her character. He in no way deserves her, and hell, he hasn't even really expressed an interest. Fuck that guy.
The secondary cast. Here's where I feel like it got really painful. It felt like they were all uniformly villains. And hell, it still feels that way - we were treated to an epilogue of supposed allies talking trash about them as they plotted secretly. And this brings me to my final point of criticism:
Clearly, it is time for the human race to just die off.
The entire world is populated with assholes. That must be the case, because it has become constant in every book I have read lately. Is anyone else tired of this trend in books? We have some Big Apocalyptic Thing (henceforth to be called BAT) about to occur, and the h/h are racing desperately to save the world. Said world is throwing up obstacles in their path at every opportunity, and most people they run across are trying to stab them in the back. What here is worth saving? I know all my friends have heard this rant from me before, so I won't go into all the detail again here, but really. Authors: you are taking the "Us Against the World" thing too far. If the world is really so shitty, I have a hard time justifying all the effort to save it. Maybe that's just me.
But in that same line, one thing this book did really take too far, for me, is the women-hating. Look, I know that women weren't exactly valued members of society in these historicals, but in this book, 99.999999999999999999% of the men treated all women (but Emily in particular) as if they were whores, idiots, slaves, or usually some combination of the three. It got tiresome. I can only handle the whore references (I have grown to loathe the world skycladdish) or the "don't worry your pretty little head" comments for so long. Having every male in the book utter one or both of these things makes me hate every male in the book. Please refer to the previous paragraph.
So. I am having a tough time with the review, because despite how things sound above, I didn't hate it. I liked the mythology the author was creating - I thought it was new and interesting. I liked the mesh of magic and science (reminds me quite a bit of the Blades of the Rose series, actually). But I feel like the story being told is a hot mess. I literally have no idea what the fuck is going on. And I am tired of a heroine that I like quite a bit being constantly belittled by not just the ENTIRE WORLD but also by the HERO.
I'll read the next, because I would like to see if this can actually pull together into something... but... for this one, I am going to give it:
***2.5***
Let's start with this: the world was fabulous. It was unique and fascinating. Flavors of steampunk, and the varieties of magic were cool. So this author gets an A for world-building.
Now let's chat about everything else. First and foremost:
What the fuck is going on in this book?
It is strange to reach the end of a book and feel like you understand less about what is going on than you did in the first couple of chapters. I think that the combination of the fact that this is the author's first book AND that this plot seems to have complicated, tangled layers where no one is really what they seem... it just adds up to too much. The ending was, for me anyway, a hot mess filled with "What just happened?" "What are they doing with it?" "Wait, am I supposed to know these people / that organization?" and then at the end, some big powerhouse Dude steps out of ... I don't know, a closet or something, leaving me baffled and wondering who the hell that guy is supposed to be. The world Hobson built is intricate and detailed, and there are organizations vying for power, but the lines between them (or lack of lines, or in some cases lines that turned out to not be lines at all) were confusing.
The characters
Emily Edwards, the heroine, was cool. She was smart, brave, quick on her feet and generally able to handle herself. She was pretty solid as a heroine. But she made a mistake in the very beginning - a mistake that is a tangent to the story, by the way, and has nothing to do with the overall plot - and it feels like she spent the entire rest of the book paying for it. It got tedious. But that aside, I liked Emily.
Dreadnought Stanton, the hero, was... an asshole. Sorry, but he did not impress me in any way. From his smug condescension early in the book (which, despite everything - including Emily saving his life on several occasions - he NEVER got over... he was still keeping vital things from her so she wouldn't worry her pretty little head over it, all the way at the very end of the book), to his bossy know-it-all attitude, to his refusal to share any info without having it pried from his smug face (and even then, he would only utter as little as he could manage before he changed the subject), he really really grated on me. He did the WRONG thing CONSTANTLY, whether it was his attitude towards Emily or his trust for IDIOTS, or just his stupid plan in the first place, and yet was always insisting that he knew best.
Their romance - if you can even call it that - didn't work for me. Because he's a douchebag. And because he never at any point actually indicated any real interest in her. I didn't buy it. And having Emily virtually throw herself at him in the end, to beg him to be with her, was appalling to me, and did a lot to undermine her character. He in no way deserves her, and hell, he hasn't even really expressed an interest.
Spoiler
At that point in the story, he hadn't even spoken to her in a month! Didn't visit her, didn't answer her letters, didn't give 2 craps about how she was doing.The secondary cast. Here's where I feel like it got really painful. It felt like they were all uniformly villains. And hell, it still feels that way - we were treated to an epilogue of supposed allies talking trash about them as they plotted secretly. And this brings me to my final point of criticism:
Clearly, it is time for the human race to just die off.
The entire world is populated with assholes. That must be the case, because it has become constant in every book I have read lately. Is anyone else tired of this trend in books? We have some Big Apocalyptic Thing (henceforth to be called BAT) about to occur, and the h/h are racing desperately to save the world. Said world is throwing up obstacles in their path at every opportunity, and most people they run across are trying to stab them in the back. What here is worth saving? I know all my friends have heard this rant from me before, so I won't go into all the detail again here, but really. Authors: you are taking the "Us Against the World" thing too far. If the world is really so shitty, I have a hard time justifying all the effort to save it. Maybe that's just me.
But in that same line, one thing this book did really take too far, for me, is the women-hating. Look, I know that women weren't exactly valued members of society in these historicals, but in this book, 99.999999999999999999% of the men treated all women (but Emily in particular) as if they were whores, idiots, slaves, or usually some combination of the three. It got tiresome. I can only handle the whore references (I have grown to loathe the world skycladdish) or the "don't worry your pretty little head" comments for so long. Having every male in the book utter one or both of these things makes me hate every male in the book. Please refer to the previous paragraph.
So. I am having a tough time with the review, because despite how things sound above, I didn't hate it. I liked the mythology the author was creating - I thought it was new and interesting. I liked the mesh of magic and science (reminds me quite a bit of the Blades of the Rose series, actually). But I feel like the story being told is a hot mess. I literally have no idea what the fuck is going on. And I am tired of a heroine that I like quite a bit being constantly belittled by not just the ENTIRE WORLD but also by the HERO.
I'll read the next, because I would like to see if this can actually pull together into something... but... for this one, I am going to give it:
***2.5***