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#24: Ann Leckie, The Raven Tower
Jun. 1st, 2019 12:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kareilaI had a very hard time with this book, and did not find it ultimately as rewarding as the author's previous works.
For one thing, the use of first and second person pronouns is confusing. It becomes clear in the first few pages that the "you" is not the reader, but the person who would be considered the protagonist in a more conventional story. But the identity of the "I" that actually relates what is happening takes much longer to figure out, and it's not clear that the "you" ever understands what is being said by the "I". The author previously used confusing pronouns to good effect when describing an alien culture, but here it seems to be painfully rhetorical.
Even more frustrating, this book has no chapters, just periodic section breaks where the story being told might shift from the present to the past, or not. That stylistic choice makes it very hard to put the book down and pick it up again.
It's an interesting story, just not one that I found particularly worth the struggles it gave me to read through it.
For one thing, the use of first and second person pronouns is confusing. It becomes clear in the first few pages that the "you" is not the reader, but the person who would be considered the protagonist in a more conventional story. But the identity of the "I" that actually relates what is happening takes much longer to figure out, and it's not clear that the "you" ever understands what is being said by the "I". The author previously used confusing pronouns to good effect when describing an alien culture, but here it seems to be painfully rhetorical.
Even more frustrating, this book has no chapters, just periodic section breaks where the story being told might shift from the present to the past, or not. That stylistic choice makes it very hard to put the book down and pick it up again.
It's an interesting story, just not one that I found particularly worth the struggles it gave me to read through it.
