The Daylight War (Book 3 of the Demon Cycle) by Peter V. Brett (3.5 stars)

Brett continues with his formula, adding another deep POV via a long series of flashbacks, this time for Inerva. Some people resented this and just wanted the story to move forward more. I think it was actually quite well done, bringing a lot of depth and another interesting perspective on the events we are now familiar with. It's very rare to have a three-dimensional picture of a story through such carefully constructed backstory.

Some minor spoilers ahead.

At some point Inerva is forced to draw on the power of her dice, destroying them in the process. Because of the backstory we know just how desperate this act is, and what it costs her. Inerva's political success looks effortless from Jardir's perspective, but Inerva's own perspective shows us just how tenuous her hold on authority is, and the risks of each of her daring power plays.

Inerva's story starts out as the female equivalent of Jardir's: plenty of physical and emotional violence, and a streak of ruthlessness needed to survive and lead the others. It gets more interesting as it moves from physical violence into political machinations and magic.

There's still plenty of cringeworthy portrayal-of-women moments that range from the amount of pages devoted to "pillow dancing" (i.e. the masters course in porn-star techniques that is mandatory for Dama'ting), and just the term "pillow dancing" in general, to silly impracticalities like having to walk down into the basement and unwind 10 feet of silk to go to the bathroom. Between Inerva displaying her pillow dancing skills for Jardir, and Renna and Arlen going at it:

He had thought their consumation would be gentle, but his bride had pounced like an animal the moment the flap fell, her aura lit up with lust.

it felt a little too much like a romance novel for my liking.

By this stage Leesha, Arlen and many others have gained lots of knowledge about how to create powerful warded weapons, many defensive techniques, and even use demon bone to power things. But they haven't released this knowledge at any sort of scale, it's one special shield here, a bit of bone there, mostly to give advantages to their friends. If they really cared about the populace why isn't every warder in the country supervising the creation of hundreds of cloaks of unsight? Sure some of this ward-tech is too dangerous for wide availability, but there are some wards every man, woman, and child should be wearing every day.

In this novel we get some insight into the mind demons, and a few POV sections which is good, although they remain fairly mysterious for now. Arlen goes around introducing himself to everyone and playing up his hick accent like some sort of reluctant politician who has been told they need to be more approachable.

The epic battles with the demons were great, LOTR-scale fights. But there was lots of bizarre decisions and inconsistencies. Like Rojer deciding the most dangerous part of a risky recon mission was a good time to take a piss. And Arlen sending his friends out to their probable deaths, on said recon mission, then, when they get back, just deciding to just teleport up in the air and take a look for himself. Either he's dumb or he's trying to get his friends killed? And why isn't every single person who is fighting wearing wards? At least the archers should have the damn wardsight wards, surely?

“Shoot the windies!” she cried. The Haveners lifted their bows to comply, but their fear was palpable, shaking hands that needed to be steady. Even with the light of the greatward, the night sky was dark, and they could not see the demons glowing as Renna did.

I really wish Brett would kill off a main character. None of the main cast dies and it's improbable given the constant life-threatening danger they face. There's this point where Jardir is dodging boulders thrown by demons that crossed the line into improbability:

Every demon on the field was focused on him now...Jardir leapt aside, but was struck even as he landed by another stone dropped from above...He was given no respite, as rocks the size of melons began to fall like rain around him. But as fast as the stones fell, Jardir was faster, dodging them like lazily drifting bubbles of soap. Even as he dodged the barrage from above, the rock and wood demons on the ground continued to hurl whatever they could grasp in their talons at him: rocks, trees, even a few of his own men.

No matter how awesome an athletic ninja you are, when enough demons throw rocks at you, you will die. Which is what should have happened in that scene. There's also a fair bit of "deus ex Crown-of-Kaji" going on, like when he needs to bust through some wards himself.

Still providing lots of entertainment.

3.5 stars.

Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie (5 stars)

After about four different personal recommendations, and finding out it had won the Hugo, Nebula, British Science Fiction, Locus and Arthur C. Clarke Awards, I had to read this. They weren't wrong, it is a spectacular debut.

Leckie does an impressive job of giving us an inside perspective of a spaceship-sized Artificial Intelligence (AI), with many different ancillaries/corpse-soldiers that make up its physical presence. This AI is our narrator, which allows Leckie to perform an impressive first-person narration without the usual limitation of the narrator being only in a single location at any time. When I read "that accounted for almost half of my twenty bodies" I knew this book was going to be fascinating.

As if that wasn't novel enough, Leckie chooses to make things even more interesting by messing with the reader's interpretation of gender. She does this by having most of the dialogue occur in Radchaai which doesn't have gendered pronouns, and from the perspective of Breq, the AI, who finds it difficult to interpret gender queues for various races anyway. In Breq's defence, this is not unusual since for many of the races gender is fairly unimportant and certainly not obvious. The end result of this is that I basically think of almost everyone in the novel as female, and was occasionally jarred out of my perceptions when other characters dropped a 'he' into the dialogue. It's amazing how much of my ability to visualise a character is rooted in gender.

So I have basically no idea what anyone looks like. This isn't helped by Leckie's fixation on memorial pin jewellery and gloves above all other features. I hope there's eventually some interesting explanation about the history of the gloves, since she makes such a big deal of them.

The start of the novel was very strong, with plenty of intrigue planted. What is this being? Why is he/she diminished? Leckie switches between flashbacks and current day to fill in the back story. There's a small amount of confusion for the reader as pieces of the world are filled in, but it's masterfully done and with minimal exposition. Just how I like it.

Not much science is explained, but there are some interesting ruminations on AI, such as emotions being essential for efficient decision making:

Without feelings insignificant decisions become excruciating attempts to compare endless arrays of inconsequential things. It's just easier to handle those with emotions.

I thought it was also interesting that that author noted she had based the Radchaai somewhat on the roman empire, which explains a lot of the religious idol worship that is present throughout the book.

Overall this is an amazing space opera. It has a Hoth and a Degobah. It has armor implants, stealth weapons, intergalactic wars, and political intrigue. The early part of the novel felt a little like a western, Firefly even, with a robbery, a barely-though-out plan, and Breq's life hanging in the balance pretty much constantly.

All sci-fi fans should read it immediately.

5 stars.