- 15 Dec, 2025 *
It is a mystery murder detective investigation book, but it is set in a fantasy world where people are augmented and have special abilities, like the perfect recall, or inhuman skills of deduction, or enhanced sight and hearing.
I won’t be spoiling much about the book. I won’t be telling you any major plot points or details that you don’t discover very early. I am going to discuss the characters and their likeability. I will discuss characters and their motivations. I will spoil things about character development.
I like the book well enough. It’s not one of my favorites, but it was reasonably good. The book starts as a simple murder mystery, but progresses into a more complex story line that goes beyond just an individual murder. I appreciated this, because th…
- 15 Dec, 2025 *
It is a mystery murder detective investigation book, but it is set in a fantasy world where people are augmented and have special abilities, like the perfect recall, or inhuman skills of deduction, or enhanced sight and hearing.
I won’t be spoiling much about the book. I won’t be telling you any major plot points or details that you don’t discover very early. I am going to discuss the characters and their likeability. I will discuss characters and their motivations. I will spoil things about character development.
I like the book well enough. It’s not one of my favorites, but it was reasonably good. The book starts as a simple murder mystery, but progresses into a more complex story line that goes beyond just an individual murder. I appreciated this, because the last two murder mysteries I read were more singularly focused on the actual crime/criminal, without much of a broader plot. They were good books, but I honestly felt like I got my fill of that style. So this book expanding beyond the initial crime was interesting and I’m glad it was there.
So. The characters. I think the characters were reasonably well written. They talked kind of weird, but it felt like it was the characters that were weird, not that the writing was bad. (unlike The Library at Hellebore by Cassandra Khaw). But I am somewhat critical of the characters themselves as well as their overall development.
The two main characters are Ana (smart detective) and Din (remembers everything) and ... they’re fine? There’s nothing particularly endearing about either of them. Ana is weird and obnoxious. Din has a somewhat shallow character - he doesn’t love his job but he needs it to pay off debts. The job he does want is combat-related, FOR HONOR. It’s just ... bland, boring, no real depth there. Ana is ... I don’t know really what to say about her, because she doesn’t really get developed at all. We don’t get her backstory. We just get this obnoxious brilliant caricature of a person. Idk.
The relationship between Ana and Din is also under-developed. And then there’s ... oh i don’t remember her name ... but she assists Din with his investigation, and she is also minimally developed.
There’s just no strong, meaningful relationships in the book. They all feel surface level and shallow. There’s no warmth in it.
So then the main draw, really the only draw of the book is the story - the bigger plot that goes beyond the simple murder mystery concept.
That plot IS interesting, but it just isn’t enough. The book just needed more. More character depth, more likeability, more endearing-ness, more meaningful relationships, more backstory.
I started to lose interest about middle-book, but I kept with it and was glad I did. My interest was recovered. But idk, some books just make me feel like "Yeah, but what’s the point?" This did that for a little bit.
Do I recommend this book? Eh. It’s worth a read if you just need something to read. I’m not crazy about the murder-mystery genre, so maybe if you are then this will be more likeable to you. I am super fond of scifi (almost every book i read is scifi or nonfiction), and this had ... almost enough to satisfy me on that front. Not quite enough. But close. There were definitely some really interesting magic-adjacent things - science seemingly so advanced that it seems like magic, but it is distinct from magic.
If you’re looking for an actual book recommendation, Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin is my all-time-favorite book/series. Everything by Jemisin is fantastic. Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse is another favorite of mine.