Crisis at Validor

by Greta Van Der Rol

[justine_manzano]

I'm usually not that big science fiction in books. I enjoy it much more in television. Still, this book wasn't bad for the space opera genre. The dispute felt real, and the politics of the world were easily understood and well built. I liked that the enemy race wasn't humanoid, and I enjoyed the fact that I could jump in on the fourth book in the story and not get lost. The lead characters, Tarlyn and Butcher, were interesting enough, and I was genuinely concerned about the outcome of their stories.

The downside of this book was that the story didn't grab me the way a story should. I found myself putting the book down and not really feeling too compelled to read. There was a lot of telling in this book, and it wouldn't let me connect to the characters the way I really wanted to. Another issue I had was the way Tarlyn was just sort of shuttled around and told what to do, and just never really took any initiative. That alone wouldn't have bugged me. She was raised as a woman of the court, never having to be an individual. But coupled with the fact that every man either viewed women as little more than attractive, or continuously referred to the annoyingness of women, the inability to understand women, and how they couldn't trust women, it started to feel like the characters were pretty misogynistic. It took away from my read of the story.

All in all, this wasn't a bad read, but it didn't keep me at the edge of my seat.