Embers of War by Gareth L. PowellMy rating: 2 of 5 stars
This isn't a terrible book, but I just can't bring myself to give it more than 2 stars. As space opera it is OK, though not as exciting as space opera can be. So much of it is kind of cardboard plot drivers. A genocide of a sentient forest that we are not motivated to care about--spending about 3 chapters developing it as a feature of the novel would have jumped up the interest all by itself. We have a sentient spaceship, and a little bit of effort to sort out its artificial but really pretty human personality (reasonably explained and even used in the plot, but again not enough depth). It's good as a writing exercise but feels more like an assignment for a novel-writing class than a story to believe in. Lots of opportunities for spinning out some detail on how this universe works are started and then closed off, so it ends up feeling like a place we have seen many times before. Oh well,
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