I think I'm just getting plum tired of literary worlds that strictly split up the world: into factions, quadrants, houses, what-have-you. Some novels do it well because it's just a fun grouping mechanism (here are your people, but also you can know other people and be a fully realized person with more than one hobby/personality trait), and some novels do it not so well (it's cliche high school clique-bait). This First Look, for Four Dead Queens, is strongly rooted in each quadrant is ONE THING and that's just... shrug. It just doesn't make economic/livable sense to have each quadrant/country only do one thing. One quadrant has genetically modified humans but somehow can't figure out agriculture? Okiedokieloki. That's just one thing that made me go "Why?"
Also why would the Queens have absolutely no idea what to do if one of them died prematurely?? How is this country running???????? My suspension of disbelief just can't deal with "comm chips" that you place on your tongue to relive memories (like, ew, are they reusable?). If this tech exists in one quadrant... and the others are supposed to stay so isolated and uninvolved with such tech, why would they be so eager to believe in it and be able to use it so quickly?
And there were loads of generalizations and omniscient declarative statements in this book that were just irksome. Why did we bother dropping into Queen Iris's perspective first? The narrative just throws assumptions around about every other queen, so whatever. And oh come on, we have a Frozen situation, where the Queens are inexplicably confined?? To not be influenced by outside sources? They have like one adviser each and that's enough?? I guess. I just, I can't even sparse what this world really looks like without a map even; the writing is that lacking with clarity.
Anywho, I don't really have an opinion about main thief, Keralie. She's bland. Woot. And I don't see how having a clacking charm bracelet celebrating "dipper"/thief wins is supposed to be helpful for more thievery? And I can just see her being more annoying as the story goes on. None of the characters have personalities so far; just informed attributes.
Thanks for the First Look, but I'm just not into this world.
Also why would the Queens have absolutely no idea what to do if one of them died prematurely?? How is this country running???????? My suspension of disbelief just can't deal with "comm chips" that you place on your tongue to relive memories (like, ew, are they reusable?). If this tech exists in one quadrant... and the others are supposed to stay so isolated and uninvolved with such tech, why would they be so eager to believe in it and be able to use it so quickly?
And there were loads of generalizations and omniscient declarative statements in this book that were just irksome. Why did we bother dropping into Queen Iris's perspective first? The narrative just throws assumptions around about every other queen, so whatever. And oh come on, we have a Frozen situation, where the Queens are inexplicably confined?? To not be influenced by outside sources? They have like one adviser each and that's enough?? I guess. I just, I can't even sparse what this world really looks like without a map even; the writing is that lacking with clarity.
Anywho, I don't really have an opinion about main thief, Keralie. She's bland. Woot. And I don't see how having a clacking charm bracelet celebrating "dipper"/thief wins is supposed to be helpful for more thievery? And I can just see her being more annoying as the story goes on. None of the characters have personalities so far; just informed attributes.
Thanks for the First Look, but I'm just not into this world.