The Mercy of Gods

Ooh I really did not like this book. I read and finished it quickly and was entertained, so it's not awful, but I did not like it.

My main complaint is 60% of the book is torture porn. Our heroes suffer existential loss, then are put in depraved captivity and subject to abuses and depredations told in explicit, stomach-turning detail. I do not understand why the authors thought that would make good entertainment.

The other complaint is the sci-fi parts of the book are not nearly as interesting as they should be. I like the structure of the Carryx, their bizarre interstellar empire and their inhuman way of thinking. But Tchaikovsky writes this kind of thing so much better, the details in this book are awfully thin to be a reward for making it through all the grim torture. There's a hint of a much more interesting space opera story in the Swarm but that's like just a little sprinkle put on top of the story, honestly if it were left out entirely it'd be the same book. Maybe that's where the series is going and it will be interesting.

My final complaint is the narrative structure. The Expanse started as a live roleplaying game with a group of friends. That shows in the narrative but it works as a series of novels. I fear this new book has the same structure. The whole first act is an unmotivated explication of unmemorable characters playing out some tedious academic scenario. Then the action picks up and you can almost see the random encounters, the players solving puzzles ("should we accept the gift from the feather monkey NPCs?"), various players dropping out of the game and meeting ugly deaths. Perhaps the Swarm was implemented as a way for one person to swap which character they were playing as. It's all just very clumsy. I don't know this book was actually written as an RPG campaign, probably not, but it has that structure and it seems clumsy.

I read this book on the back of re-reading some of the Earthsea stories. Which are so much the opposite: humanistic, kind, empathetic, motivated and personal. Coming to Space Abu Ghraib was not a good turn.