These two novels are the first and second novel of a sci-fi trilogy. Usually, I tend to either review novels in a trilogy individually or do the whole trilogy as one review. And since I have only read two, my original intent was to do two separate reviews. But here is the thing: I liked the first book. It wasn’t perfect – I think there is something about the author’s style that just doesn’t quite work for me so that even when I am enjoying the story and plot, I am not as invested as I want to be – but it was interesting and different, and also opened the way for a few different ways for the story to expand. The second book, The Fractured Dark, however was just tedious. So hence the reviews together because not only can I not recommend the first novel without a huge warning about the second novel, the second novel made me question how much I actually liked the first novel – things I thought were slow because it was set up – turns out that’s just how the author writes.
The second novel was too long. The characters were pale copies of the characters we met in The Blighted Stars and their romance is badly written after establishing a real connection in the first novel – book 2 feels like instalove, and it’s all the more frustrating because it was done better in the previous novel. Instead, everyone just reads as emotionally immature and juvenile. The characters and the plot were running in circles (literally, a character is kidnapped in the middle of the book, rescued but left in place and just kind of ends up in the same spot, more or less – there were kind of plot reasons and some slight differences in what it meant for them to be where they were but it’s a whole 100-200 pages of “what is even the point of anything that has happened here”), and we didn’t even explore one of the interesting ideas raised in book 1.
Instead we get new ideas that could lead to questions about identity but it’s all just so boring because it’s overstuffed with ideas that we don’t get into. I think the author wrote herself into the corner with the big reveal from book 1 and couldn’t figure out how to progress the plot since the reveal meant everything had to be considered through that lens, and it quickly became the least interesting part of all the concepts raised.
She could have explored sentient AI or gotten more into this whole idea of splicing together personalities and memories. This universe is driven by the search for resources and materials that let humans download their memories and reprint themselves, and it’s used to show inequality and wealth disparity as the poor can’t afford reprints for themselves or their family but why is no one mentioning the larger ethical question of, “we wouldn’t need all these resources if we didn’t all live in printed bodies” (though the concept did open the door for a world more friendly to transgender individuals since people can print themselves their preferred bodies). But nope … we are too busy questioning everyone’s decisions because of the sentient fungus in everyone’s bloodstream to actually really have a forward progressing plot or character motivations that make sense.
