A Step Through The Empty (The VIS Remaining Trilogy, #1)

by H E Salian

[llamareads]

After reading a sample chapter, I was interested in finding out more about Medius, the Empty, and what Bry was going to do to secure his throne. While the book does have that, unfortunately, it has a lot of elements I didn’t care for.

That’s the heart of my main criticism of the book - there’s just too much going on. I liked Bry, Shad and Stori, but wasn’t as interested in Lawr, Ali and the rest. There’s a lot of characters and subplots, with a lot of jumping back and forth for no discernible reason, and it definitely affected the pacing. I found myself skimming until a character I was interested in came back on page. The plot itself - averting a war, complete with assassins and traitors - was fine, though, again, I found some bits, like Lawr being able to hack the technologically advanced Lucians’ tech, unrealistic. For whatever reason, despite being hotshot mercenaries in their twenties, Bry and Shad talked like a bunch of teenagers and it made them come off as younger and more inexperienced than they were supposed to be. I thought the concept of sphaeres and the Empty was interesting, and while it’s a bit confusing at first as you’re just thrown right in with no context, I thought it was explained well enough as the book went on.

Overall, it’s very much a first book in a series, and while it had some interesting and unique aspects, it tried to do too much in one book. I’d give it 2.5 stars, rounded up to 3.

I received a copy of this book from BookSirens. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.