Hello everyone!
For book choice this week, I'm once again going with one I picked up from BookSirens.
I know, I know, I probably keep harping about this site a lot on the blog, but honestly, it's just so fantastic. You have ARCs (or published copies) of books from pretty much any and all genres, and you can ask for them and you get them FOR FREE, the only thing you have to do in return is read the book and write an honest review.
I think I've picked up a bunch of books from them so far and 3/4 of them have been absolutely fantastic.
Of course you'll occasionally run into one or two that, as any other reader, you might not like quite so much, and that's fine! That's also a review to leave; I try to finish every single book because it gives them feedback and also ... I don't like not finishing books. It has to be a really, REALLY bad book for me not to finish it.
ANYWAY.
I went a bit off the beaten path and took the road less travelled by, so to speak, because I picked up something Star Wars-related in the sense the plot was fairly similar in a way. A galaxy, planets connected in some sort of regime, rebellions ... read all that, and more, in The Last Erdane!
I did read and review several Star Wars novels, but this one doesn't necessarily fit in there either so ... I have nothing to offer you on this count, other than The Last Erdane itself! So let's just hop right to it and see what Louise E. Pascual wrote, shall we?
Sedna Erdane is the last surviving member of her family; her parents defied the King of the Federation their planet is a part of, and despite being one of the three founding families, they ended up beheaded, and their daughter branded a traitor at twelve. Since then, there's been a blockade (a la Phantom Menace Naboo) and Sedna's people are dying, so she has to come up with something to save them. This will, unfortunately, mean she needs to beg forgiveness from the Queen, daughter of the King who murdered her family, but you know.
One of the Queen's council members, Wesley March, comes to persuade Sedna to what she needs to do, and she agrees to fly to the capital planet to do her thing, and it's the first inkling we get that these two might be more than friends, or at least one of them wants to be more than friends.
This proves true later on when they start a relationship, but the entire book is written so you're not really sure if this is because of actual emotions, or because Sedna wants it to be so and Wesley just has no spine whatsoever.
Anyway.
Sedna does the whole apology thing and then remains behind on the planet to see what she can do about usurping the current monarch and starting a rebellion, which as she finds out is already brewing.
See, the Queen hasn't made herself popular when she burned and shut down all the farms producing food for the populace, going into silk production, but no one wants to buy silk so now the people are effectively starving (and why did she ban all that food production, you ask? Well, she saw how organized everything was and was terrified that it could mean a revolt, so she destroyed it before it could happen, but apparently no one told her that silk production ALSO needs to be organized so it's the same thing ...).
So Sedna gets in touch with the rebellion, which consists of an entire people, the planet's indigenous populace hiding under the capital (underground, I mean), the Valoda, who can control minds, and they've been sort of slowly gathering power and ideas and how to make this happen for a bit.
With Sedna's arrival, and her alliance with Liam, the prince who was SUPPOSED to be king until that didn't happen (long story, involving a failed battle and the king branding him traitor), things start moving, not that the higher ups actually like it. In fact, for most of the book, you might get the feeling that they were all pretty happy with the status quo and never would have done anything if Sedna hadn't started the ball rolling.
Firstly, she has to give up Wesley, however, and this eventually results in HIM walking away from HER, something she's never going to forgive him for given everyone she's ever loved left her, but she does marry Liam and starts arming the rebels, something the Valoda leader refused to previously do.
The Queen, of course, is trying to get rid of Sedna, but it's not working because Sedna is one of those individuals who can make people love her and is charismatic enough to draw everyone into this confederacy they have going on trying to usurp the current regime. She is, however, damaged from her experiences as a child and clearly states she's doing it for revenge - she's not lying, this girl. She wants the King and Queen dead.
And after a trip to the neighbouring Empire, which has been trying to annex the Federation for a while but the Queen wouldn't let them, Sedna and Liam strike a deal with the Emperor instead, and it's game time for the lot, especially after a failed assassination attempt on one of their den entrances which leaves the most unlikely person dead, which, kind of like in the Avengers when Coulson is killed by Loki, sparks a rage in all the participants.
They stage their attack on the palace, but the Valoda leadership has been plotting behind Sedna's back and rescues the Queen, who is actually part Valoda herself (just like Sedna, at that, from intermingling generations back), and so Sedna only gets part of her revenge.
She does, however, tell Liam she has no plans whatsoever to join the Empire and she's made a deal with said Empire, at that, which pisses him off, and even though her reasoning is sound, he reverts back to the sulking person he was at the start of the story who drank and couldn't be trusted with anything, and hightails it to the Valoda himself.
Sedna, meanwhile, takes the throne and announces she's carrying Liam's child, which solidifies her grasp - and has me hoping that every single one of them who keep telling her she can't do this or that because it's just not done will eventually SUCK IT. I want her to WIN.
I am, however, a little on the fence about this one, because, overall, even though I DID like it, there were definitely things I didn't like, so it's somewhere in the solid middle for me.
The story, at the root, is fairly simple: an exiled ruler from a disgraced family is welcomed back to court and enters into a game of high politics and intrigue, not just with the Queen of the Federation her planet belongs to, but with other entities outside this alignment (namely Azendi and the Empire) to try and grasp as much power as she believes was unfairly taken from her. Behind all this is a quest for revenge and the desire of a twelve-year-old girl to show everyone who ever underestimated her that she can do whatever the hell she wants. And through sheer force of personality, she manages to win over all the enemies of the current King and Queen, depose said Queen, and become ruler herself, with plans for even greater steps moving forward.
So, in essence, that sounds like a story I could get behind. And just as it is, I am - I enjoyed the back and forth and actually got a kick out of all the political and mind games Sedna played with the people around her, who never knew just what was going on through her head.
However, the first thing that might throw readers off is the sheer amount of characters, some of them with names that you have to write down, because while I pride myself with being able to remember people over a span of pages (I do read the Outlander books, after all!), there were times when a character here would get name-dropped at the beginning, and then brought back up for a page or half a page again by the end, making me wonder just who the HECK were they. The problem here is that there's such a sheer number of names thrown at the reader that it's difficult to remember someone who was maybe only worth a footnote somewhere to begin with.
Then there are the main characters.
I'm not sure if I REALLY like any of them. I don't think they're supposed to be liked? I'm not sure what the author was going for here honestly. I like Sedna to a degree, but none of the others are even remotely on her level, and she's not at 100% either. Liam, for instance, is basically a waste of space, who is given a vast amount of control and he'd rather spend his time drinking. He is, if distilled, the momma's boy who needs to constantly be told by a mother figure what he can or can't do, and that was just not fun to read about. I was also slightly disappointed by how obvious the romance in the book was - I liked Wesley for Sedna although I knew as soon as that ended that she was going to end up with Liam. I'd have preferred it if she and Wesley remained a thing and she and Liam only married for political gain.
The rest are a hodge-podge, but most of them are simply there to try and put Sedna in a corner, which got exhausting to read after a while. People, you're planning a rebellion and a coup d'etat, you can't just sit there and fiddle with your thumbs waiting for something to happen! And then when Sedna pushed for things to HAPPEN, they were all like OHGOSHHOWDARESHE?!? WHY ARE THINGS HAPPENING?!?
Um ...
There was definitely an imbalance with the characters, if we touch just on the Queen next, who has to be the stupidest ruler I've ever seen. There's a scene towards the end of the book attempting to make us feel sorry for her, but, honestly? When someone says that the only reason they burned all the crops and farms and forbade people from growing their own food (thus forcing them to starve) was because they were afraid at how ORGANIZED everything was (since, you know, it has to be to work), there's no feeling of sorry anywhere. The Queen is literally shown as an airhead throughout the book, and that one scene doesn't save her at all, not in my eyes. It just shows she's as unsuitable for the role as everyone thinks she is, and NEEDS to be removed.
I won't go into the rest of the characters. I could write a whole topic on them, I think, but it's best if you read for yourselves.
The setting itself is fairly easy to understand, despite this being set in space, after Earth was left behind and new planets colonized. Maybe there could have been more jumping around, but most of the action did take place on the one planet though, so that's fine.
I will say that the first half of the book takes some time to chew through, but things start happening in the second half and it's a much faster read, all in all. There are, however, grammatical mistakes in the text and occasionally it shows that the author might not be a native speaker of English because of the way some sentences are constructed, but this doesn't really take away from the story itself. What occasionally takes away is how condensed everything is - scenes or characters rarely have the time to breathe and let settle, because there's so much that has to happen and so much that has to be shown. It's one quick rap after another, and all the quick action and decisions can become confusing.
Overall, however, I feel like this story is basically a psychological play on life itself: there is a man, who is very much attached to his "mother", and then a new woman enters the scene, a woman he might be happy with, have a family with, and of course the "mother" throws a fit and does everything she possibly can to protect her sweet boy. The woman constantly gets told she should conform to the man's view and his family's expectations, and when she doesn't, sparks fly. And in the end, the man has to choose: mother or partner? The partner tells him she won't beg - it has to be his choice, but also that he's pathetic for letting the "mother" have so much influence over him. And because we've already established the man in this story is a momma's boy, he runs back to her with tail tucked between his legs because he can't handle the woman in question.
As that, it's an interesting exercise really, but I'm now hoping that Sedna shows them all. There will obviously be complications given that there's more than the one child (you'll have to read for more information though!), but I hope, I HOPE that she shows them all wrong, every single one who thinks that she's crazy. I didn't get the ending with Daenerys Targaryen which I was hoping for, so I'm desperately hoping Sedna shows them all and ends up on top as the most powerful player, bringing democracy back between the stars. Because she has the chance and willpower to do it - she literally brought everyone together and everyone on her side as soon as she showed up. Democracy should be a piece of cake.
Fingers crossed!
The story, at the root, is fairly simple: an exiled ruler from a disgraced family is welcomed back to court and enters into a game of high politics and intrigue, not just with the Queen of the Federation her planet belongs to, but with other entities outside this alignment (namely Azendi and the Empire) to try and grasp as much power as she believes was unfairly taken from her. Behind all this is a quest for revenge and the desire of a twelve-year-old girl to show everyone who ever underestimated her that she can do whatever the hell she wants. And through sheer force of personality, she manages to win over all the enemies of the current King and Queen, depose said Queen, and become ruler herself, with plans for even greater steps moving forward.
So, in essence, that sounds like a story I could get behind. And just as it is, I am - I enjoyed the back and forth and actually got a kick out of all the political and mind games Sedna played with the people around her, who never knew just what was going on through her head.
However, the first thing that might throw readers off is the sheer amount of characters, some of them with names that you have to write down, because while I pride myself with being able to remember people over a span of pages (I do read the Outlander books, after all!), there were times when a character here would get name-dropped at the beginning, and then brought back up for a page or half a page again by the end, making me wonder just who the HECK were they. The problem here is that there's such a sheer number of names thrown at the reader that it's difficult to remember someone who was maybe only worth a footnote somewhere to begin with.
Then there are the main characters.
I'm not sure if I REALLY like any of them. I don't think they're supposed to be liked? I'm not sure what the author was going for here honestly. I like Sedna to a degree, but none of the others are even remotely on her level, and she's not at 100% either. Liam, for instance, is basically a waste of space, who is given a vast amount of control and he'd rather spend his time drinking. He is, if distilled, the momma's boy who needs to constantly be told by a mother figure what he can or can't do, and that was just not fun to read about. I was also slightly disappointed by how obvious the romance in the book was - I liked Wesley for Sedna although I knew as soon as that ended that she was going to end up with Liam. I'd have preferred it if she and Wesley remained a thing and she and Liam only married for political gain.
The rest are a hodge-podge, but most of them are simply there to try and put Sedna in a corner, which got exhausting to read after a while. People, you're planning a rebellion and a coup d'etat, you can't just sit there and fiddle with your thumbs waiting for something to happen! And then when Sedna pushed for things to HAPPEN, they were all like OHGOSHHOWDARESHE?!? WHY ARE THINGS HAPPENING?!?
Um ...
There was definitely an imbalance with the characters, if we touch just on the Queen next, who has to be the stupidest ruler I've ever seen. There's a scene towards the end of the book attempting to make us feel sorry for her, but, honestly? When someone says that the only reason they burned all the crops and farms and forbade people from growing their own food (thus forcing them to starve) was because they were afraid at how ORGANIZED everything was (since, you know, it has to be to work), there's no feeling of sorry anywhere. The Queen is literally shown as an airhead throughout the book, and that one scene doesn't save her at all, not in my eyes. It just shows she's as unsuitable for the role as everyone thinks she is, and NEEDS to be removed.
I won't go into the rest of the characters. I could write a whole topic on them, I think, but it's best if you read for yourselves.
The setting itself is fairly easy to understand, despite this being set in space, after Earth was left behind and new planets colonized. Maybe there could have been more jumping around, but most of the action did take place on the one planet though, so that's fine.
I will say that the first half of the book takes some time to chew through, but things start happening in the second half and it's a much faster read, all in all. There are, however, grammatical mistakes in the text and occasionally it shows that the author might not be a native speaker of English because of the way some sentences are constructed, but this doesn't really take away from the story itself. What occasionally takes away is how condensed everything is - scenes or characters rarely have the time to breathe and let settle, because there's so much that has to happen and so much that has to be shown. It's one quick rap after another, and all the quick action and decisions can become confusing.
Overall, however, I feel like this story is basically a psychological play on life itself: there is a man, who is very much attached to his "mother", and then a new woman enters the scene, a woman he might be happy with, have a family with, and of course the "mother" throws a fit and does everything she possibly can to protect her sweet boy. The woman constantly gets told she should conform to the man's view and his family's expectations, and when she doesn't, sparks fly. And in the end, the man has to choose: mother or partner? The partner tells him she won't beg - it has to be his choice, but also that he's pathetic for letting the "mother" have so much influence over him. And because we've already established the man in this story is a momma's boy, he runs back to her with tail tucked between his legs because he can't handle the woman in question.
As that, it's an interesting exercise really, but I'm now hoping that Sedna shows them all. There will obviously be complications given that there's more than the one child (you'll have to read for more information though!), but I hope, I HOPE that she shows them all wrong, every single one who thinks that she's crazy. I didn't get the ending with Daenerys Targaryen which I was hoping for, so I'm desperately hoping Sedna shows them all and ends up on top as the most powerful player, bringing democracy back between the stars. Because she has the chance and willpower to do it - she literally brought everyone together and everyone on her side as soon as she showed up. Democracy should be a piece of cake.
Fingers crossed!
"Historians will write that I did it for social progress.
My enemies will believe I was drunk on power.
The people will think differently ... and I will let them."
The Last Erdane, p. 340
xx
*image not mine
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