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Hi Guys, I'm following up my Spotlight post with a review of Shards of Earth.
A big thank you to UK Tor, BlackCrow, and NetGalley for the eARC of this book.
"Shards of Earth" is a great story set in space and has everything I like in it: war, aliens, politics, and action.
I'm somewhat new to the adult sci-fi genre, so please take this review with the grain of salt. I'm still trying to find out what works and doesn't work for me in this genre and I'm trying out different types. What drew me to this book was the premise, it sounds amazing and I actually got the audiobook to listen to while working which made the experience pretty good for me. I would switch between the ebook and the audiobook. The narration is excellent and if you like audiobooks, I do recommend it.
Now, I think this book was a slight miss for me due to its complexity and also because I wasn't actually in the mood for it but if I was waiting to get in the right mood for sci-fi, we'd be waiting for another year.
While I did enjoy it for the majority of it, and I can also tell that this isn't a bad book at all, it just didn't work for me and I'm sad because I really wanted it to be a hit for me. It has all the things that I like except for one: the characters.
I really can't tell you much about any of them save for Solis and Idris who are the two characters who left the most lasting impression on me. However, I still can't think of much about them. I love the idea of who they are and what has been happening to them and with them and I would've loved to have explored that a bit more.
The novel is actually a lot more plot-driven than I expected and has a lot of action, which I usually don't mind if I care about the characters. I feel like I, as the reader, was thrust into the world and the storyline pretty much right off the bat and so I was mostly confused, wondering what was going on for the most part.
I liked the writing a lot and all of the action scenes were very well-written. After I got used to the writing, it got so much easier to read and I flew through it. I actually enjoyed a lot of the new species and the world as a whole. Some of the scientific things flew over my head but that's to be expected. I do have to say that I love it when there are aliens in sci-fi novels so this increased my enjoyment by a lot.
The ending was quite satisfying to me. Even if I couldn't connect to the entire novel, I loved the conclusion and I'd definitely read the sequel.
This was also my first Tchaikovsky book and even though it wasn't completely my taste, I will try his other books too.
I do want to stress again that this is NOT a bad book at all, it just wasn't completely for me. However, it does have great world-building, concept, great action scenes, and atmosphere.