This really isn’t a review as it is my thoughts about the book so far. Here it goes:
I'm 250 pages into this book and I think I'm going to speed read the rest, or at least the gamma quadrant parts. I don't even know how I managed to get this far. I’ve been reading 40 or 50 pages a day, but this book isn't drawing me in. My only motivation for continuing to read the book is that I don't want to miss out on the plotlines and character arcs since they’ll be important to Cathedral no doubt, but I keep saying to myself: "When can I start reading the next book in the series?"
I know, I should be able to focus and read the book maturely and all that but it's not working. I'm not sure if
a) the book really is exhausting, inconsistent and unspiring; or if
b) the book looks bad because it came after twilight, a really good book; or if
c) I'm tired of media in general, since I've noticed I haven't been too kind to the last few movies I've seen either
But I'm sure it's probably a combination of the three rather than any one thing.
I often find myself picking apart the text as I read it, always finding something wrong with it every few pages (either scientifically or poor characterization). For instance, Ezri comments that she wonders why the water wasn’t purple like it was on Trill. For a person who’s been scientist a few times and I think all the hosts would have probably taken introductory to Physics (even I haven’t), she would know the answer to that question. There are lots of inconsistencies and mischaracterizations though.
Ultimately, the style is too inconsistent for my taste. Sometimes Ezri is in deep thought for 5 pages, talking about nothing that is important (and I know it has no relevance to the plot - it only serves to bring in more atmosphere I suppose) and other scenes are all action, dialog and so on. I know authors need to balance the two aspects of writing, but it feels that Heather's writing doesn't. Most of the detailed paragraphs are useless (at least as far as the characters or plot is concerned with regards to the story) and are exhausting. I find that I can skip these passages most of the time and miss absolutely nothing. It makes me question, why did she put this in the story? What really bugs me though is that it goes on for 5 pages, starting the scene and then ending with 2 lines of meaningless dialog (that's intended to be a cliffhanger of some kind, but doesn't delight or intrigue in some way).
I think the Yrythy (or whatever they are called) are a useless race. There are simply too many characters of this species introduced throughout the book and it’s hard to know “who is who” since some names aren’t mentioned for 40 pages or more. For a time, I thought I'd make some character sketches to help me throughout the book, but I realized it wasn't worth it. I realized that I don't care enough about these characters and I’ll treat them as “random character X”. The only one that means anything to me is Karen because she has an identity while the others don't. The name is also familiar, so you can easily recall it with little effort.
And while it's somewhat cool that Shar is finding something deeply personal during this mission, everything else seems pointless (ezri and vaughn's plots). It’s hard to find something interesting. I guess the story is really about Shar, but too much other stuff is happening that the book loses focus.
The alpha quadrant plots are a lot better, but Ro and Quark have been reduced to the relationship that S.D. Perry intended (To me, that's not a very positive thing since I thought David R. George III was doing so many good things with these characters). I felt that Jarmen reset the events that happened in Twilight and made it… I dunno… redundant and somewhat immature and unnatural. Quark is definitely not written well either, which makes most of these scenes unbelievable for me. I thought he was starting to change but now he's back to typical Quark (and even that is way off unfortunately). Other than him being greedy, thinking about his bar, it’s another character entirely and it’s not the one George was developing. It might have been planned that way, but nothing was mentioned when we reading the story from Quark’s PoV to indicate this change in character.
I also noticed that some scenes are cut short. Like some officers will be talking for 4 lines of dialog and suddenly the last line of dialog will indicate that they've had an exhausting discussion - where was I while this was happening? The scene where they meet the Yruthy happened too quickly as well. I can't believe everything was hunky-dory and without incident. Vaughn would have reflected a lot more on this situation and would have taken some steps to ensure the safety of his crew and veracity of this new species’ claims. A bunch of other scenes end too quickly during the book, however, it did get better after the first 100 pages.
I could say a lot of other stuff about it, but I'm going to stop. I just find that I like 10 pages in the book and then despise the next 10 pages and it seems to loop like that, at least up until page 250 anyway. I think some scrutinizing edits were definitely required and a reduction in length wouldn't have hurt either. For some reason, Twilight didn't feel exhausting at all for the most part - I finished it in 4 days actually and loved every bit of it. Even though This Gray Spirit is 100 pages less, it feels like I'm drugging through it. That can't be good.
I’m going to read on. The Andorian plots are alright and I’m curious about the Cardassians, but the book doesn’t have the “thing” that keeps me reading and anticipating the story.
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