thefourthvine's Reviews > Winter’s Orbit

It probably doesn't help that I read an earlier version of this first, but I think my fundamental problems with this would have been the same regardless. This book suffers from stakes issues and worldbuilding problems, and the combination made it hard for me to enjoy what was (in its original form) a fun romance story.

So, first, the stakes issues. There are two sets of stakes running through this book: one is Will These Two Find Love and one is (basically) Saving the World. As a reader, if saving the world is on the table, I find myself struggling to care about finding love. There's a point in the book (view spoiler)[Where Kiem is going hell for leather trying to save Jainan and uncovers a plot to start a war that will end with, at minimum, billions of deaths. And then he keeps trying to save Jainan. I found myself completely unable to care about saving Jainan in the face of, you know. The deaths (hide spoiler)]. When you elevate the stakes to the biggest ones possible, you need to be really careful about keeping readers engaged with any smaller issues, and if that smaller issue is a romance between two people who have known each other less than a month, you are writing on hard mode for sure. Smaller stakes actually work better in many, many plots, and this book is maybe the perfect example of why.

Then there's the worldbuilding, which is largely vibes and auctorial convenience. And that is FINE in a romance novel where the romance is the only plot there is! It is less fine when you have two plots of simultaneous importance running side by side and one of them is a space opera plot. Suddenly I, as a reader, need to know a lot of things I didn't before, including the all-important "are we the baddies?" Like. I got that the baddies in this book were bad. I just didn't get enough evidence to feel great about any of the factions in here, which is especially problematic given that the main characters represent one of them. But that's only part of it. My real problem is that the entire world and everything in it felt like sets in a high school production of Wicked: you have some interesting sketches of beasts and hints of special abilities, but you can tell you're still in Edmonton. There's no believability or existence beyond the page for any of this.

And now I'm going to talk about the difference between the earlier version and this one, because I can't not. The earlier version built on Maxwell's strengths, which are about writing emotion and relationships. This book has a lot more plot, and the plot REALLY suffered from first novel problems. (view spoiler)[I spent the first half of the book gritting my teeth because the main characters KEPT ON TRUSTING a dude who was so, so obviously the bad guy. (hide spoiler)] The pacing was weird, the whole thing was obvious, and, worst of all, BOTH main problems kept not being resolved because people didn't talk to each other.

I'm confident that Maxwell can fix all these problems, and I look forward to trying her again in a few books. But, man, this was not the happiest reading experience for me.