Matt McAvoy Book Review

I’m sorry to say that I found this book quite a tough read, and that is definitely not because of Megan’s writing ability – far from it; she is intelligent, talented and highly eloquent.  I think perhaps what I struggled with a little was her writing style.  Or, perhaps more accurate it might be to say styles, because, to tell the truth, it did feel at times as if I was reading two different books.  The deep fantasy – surprisingly, for me – was actually fine; Megan crafts a tremendously detailed, multi-layered space opera, with a depth of language and profound narrative that would make Frank Herbert nod and smile.  But, on the flipside to this was the character interaction.  The fact is that if you took away the sci-fi elements of the book, these characters felt like they might have behaved the same way in any other genre; in parts, it read almost like a slice-of-life comic-drama, or a twenty-something coming-of-age jaunt.  It is extremely dialogue heavy, much of which is banter – whilst not inappropriate, its volume is distracting and the amount of filler between key moments can make them a little easy to miss; I admit, I lost track on many occasions.

Overall, I think the general problem for me was the sheer amount of detail: backstory is detailed; dialogue is detailed; character establishment is detailed yet, being frank, for the most part this book and its story may have been more suited to a sci-fi novella format – the 90,000 or so words felt like a lot, and the inconsistent author styles did add to the confusion, compounded further by missing scene breaks, particularly in scenes of dialogue.

This probably sounds like a negative review, so I feel it is important to reiterate here that I have no doubts at all about the author’s ability and talent for writing; she is very skilled in this respect, with a good technical aptitude for sci-fi – I would simply preferred to have seen the amount of content toned down, to make the book continue in the easy reading style with which it started.  I would advise that, in its current form, it would probably be more suited to outright fans of space fantasy, able to immerse themselves in this world and setpieces Megan constructed.  I just wasn’t able to personally.