charlotte,'s Reviews > Ocean's Echo

On my blog.

Rep: gay mcs, sapphic side character, nonbinary side characters, trans side character

Galley provided by publisher

Ocean’s Echo was, ultimately, a disappointment. After Winter’s Orbit, I thought I would at least like Everina Maxwell’s follow-up. Instead, I found myself bored for the most part and unable to see why exactly I should be rooting for the main couple.

Set in the same, nebulously described world as Winter’s Orbit, this book follows two characters I can’t even recall the names of (Tennal and Surit, as I had to look up). Tennal is the nephew of someone high up in government (whose power you just have to trust because it’s not exactly clear what role she really plays), but is a disappointment, and being so-called “reader”, also perceived as a danger to society. So, in an illegal move, he gets sent into military service, to be forcibly bonded to an “architect” (who, to me, seems more dangerous than someone who can read minds, someone who can write their will onto another person’s mind). Surit is chosen as that architect.

Perhaps it’s clear from this paragraph what my first point is going to be about, and that’s the worldbuilding. It’s flimsy to the point of basically being transparent. This, I’ll admit, is also the case with Winter’s Orbit and I think the reason I could let it go there was because I’d already read the story back when it was online. Now, though, there was a new story and I could see all the weaknesses more apparent. I basically can’t explain anything to you about this world because I don’t know anything about it. I haven’t been told anything except some handwavey explanations of readers and architects. It’s not even the more complex things that were left out, it was simple things like how the power dynamics of the world work, who’s in charge, how are they elected, do they live on planets, is this a kind of space empire, is it multiple regions all connected (I would lean towards this explanation, since apparently this book takes place in the same timeline as the first book, but across the galaxy. Don’t ask me how that works). As I said, flimsy to the point of being transparent.

I could forgive this, I think, if I had found anything compelling about the relationship. But I didn’t. The characters didn’t feel bland, per se—although given that they didn’t even stick in my mind well enough to remember names, it might be argued they were—but they didn’t inspire any sort of emotional connection within me. And in a book that pretty much relies on those characters and their relationship, that was a killer. I just didn’t care about anything that I was meant to. There were times I was reading it thinking, I’m supposed to feel something, and I just didn’t. There was nothing there to feel.

Maybe the only redeeming feature here was the writing, but even that was offset by the sheer length of the book. It did not need to be this long. The plot didn’t need to be so complex (and arguably the book didn’t have the range to do that complexity well anyway). Much of it could have been cut and then maybe Maxwell might have focused more on the emotions of it all.

As it was, I ended up reading… whatever this was.