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I have not read any other Recluce books so at this point it feels like a very generic fantasy book, although not in a bad way. It's well written, the world building is interesting. The character is growing up and learning about this world bit by bit.

It'd be nicer if he was slightly less interested in boobs. And there's only so many books I can read in my life where the adolescent is told by everyone "study X" and he whines about it for most of the book and then does do X and lo and behold it works. Yeah, it's very believable, but I can have less realism.

The travelogue parts of the book do have a lot more struggle with the weather and food, which is nice.

This is my third or fourth Culture book, and probably the one I liked least. Basically (theme on all my dislikes) I didn't like the characters, even the protagonist. And his motivation of "this side of the war, I guess" just didn't really feel like it held up.

I think on a re-read I'd be less irritated by how the protagonist (admittedly, realistically) just lurches from situation to situation without any real overarching plan, but as with every other Banks book, I struggle to summarise the plot simply. A lot of things happen but their end relation to the plot on the cover is low.

I seem to be getting increasingly partial to historic voyages, so some bias here. But the author manages to flesh out characters with a lot of (clearly flagged) speculation to fill in blanks. He also resists spoiling the result of the 280 year old story.

If you like starvation and scurvy, this book has a lot.

@dht6000 depends what you do and don't like about it. Not for me. There's a lengthy torture scene which I didn't enjoy (much like both Richard Morgan books I read). The character develops, and plots are tied together. I don't regret reading it, but I don't remember it too well. I think the world was just too miserable for me. I mentioned this on an r/Fantasy and the author chipped in with a crowdsourced poll of his fans ratings of his books by "grimdarkness". Turns out my limit is lower than I thought! 😃💀

Reading these in the wrong order, sigh

@dht6000 yeah I found this trilogy got harder for me as I went along

A trial

Airbnb find. Probably won't finish it