Monday, March 22, 2021

The Rosewater Redemption, by Tade Thompson

This series is definitely not perfect. You have to adjust your expectations as you go along. Overall I'd say it's loosely written and feels kind of out of control in places. But if you can just kind of roll with it and enjoy the point of view, it ends up working pretty well.

The final installment begins with Oyin Da, aka Bicycle Girl, and through the book we get more of her story. She is definitely the most confusing character in the bunch, doing some kind of low tech time travel for her part of the story, phasing in and out of people's lives through the xenosphere, the aliens' pervasive communication scheme. But the rest of the bunch--Femi the operative, Aminat the heroic agent, Jacque Jacques the highly complex politician, and Kaaro the sensitive sensitive--really grew on me with this last installment. There are several other characters I didn't name that get their own line and personality, so in that sense the work is very well balanced.

There's a whole lot of action throughout, which really kept me reading. I thought several times during my reading that there is a movie script here--the characters are described as very attractive and it seems like the visuals would be interesting. But capturing the plot would be kind of hard, since there's so much going on.

Some reviewers were pretty bothered by the plot inconsistencies, and it made the ending less satisfying for them. But I have to say I liked how he wrapped things up. Yes it is consciously done, in a chapter called "Reprise", but that doesn't mean it's too simple.

Overall I'm glad I chose to persist and finish this series. There's a lot of fun to be had reading it, and some interesting ideas there as well.

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