What Happens Next: A Gallimaufry

melancholic romantic comic cynic. bi & genderqueer. fantasy writer. sysrae on ao3.

An Accident of Stars

abouthalfthree:

There were ways in which reading this book felt a lot like reading Old Man’s War. Partly that’s not at all to do with the story, but with the book: mass market paperback, that thick, formatted that particular way. Also it’s a particular plot trope that the book takes a building place, so the stories are built in similar ways. I was interested in what Meadows was doing with portal stories. But then I got totally sucked in by the world and the people and just how clever this is, how many things it does within a story that could be described very simply.
The way that things were revealed to me as the reader and to Saffron was effective. I loved the multiple perspectives. Whose bit of the story that we got for which sections was effective. I never felt that Meadows was keeping things from me for kicks or drama, likewise the characters did not have to draw attention to their own ignorance as foreshadowing (something which third person can more easily avoid than first, I think).
This books is great. I loved it. I will read it again when book two comes out and maybe more than that. It turned things that can be frustrating into assets by deftly complicating the situations and making characters acknowledge their own flaws and the issues of their circumstances. So, Saffron’s trauma, and having to invent a story for the police, and planning that in advance, and having Gwen to guide her, and the language magic requiring conscious use in ways that revealed the world, Saffron not remembering the dreams. There’s a clear sense of everyone’s stories beginning before and continuing after the book. And while Saffron’s story is the framing of the beginning and end of the book, that is a conceit that is undermined by her acknowledgement that what we as readers know is the story that she cannot tell and is an unacknowledged part of her life.
It was also fabulous and reassuring to see excellent modelling of behaviour, characters apologising, recognising their own prejudice and how their own flaws make them different from others.
I am so glad that there is a book two, but I thought that the world building and framing of the story worked really well as a stand alone as well. Especially with the cliffhanger.

A lovely review of An Accident of Stars - thank you!

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    A lovely review of An Accident of Stars - thank you!
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