The Reading of Words

Hi,

So I just finished The Killing of Worlds by Scott Westerfeld. And by "finished", I mean, "devoured cover-to-cover in a single evening". I don't do that too often, so that should give you some indication.

Killing of Worlds is the second half to The Risen Empire which I reviewed not too long ago. As mentioned in that post, The Risen Empire is shamefully only half a book (due to a stupid-head publisher). So you really need both these books in order to get a real story out of it. However, The Killing of Worlds wastes almost no time re-treading anything covered in the previous books. It leads in with the last chapter of Risen Empire as a prologue and then takes off at a dead sprint. Westerfeld keeps the action moving along at a quick clip and before you know it, you're thundering into the last 50 pages.

And the story actually ends. Oh there's room for another sequel or two, but unlike the Risen Empire, you don't feel utterly cheated. Whatever is left undone is not so important that you can't imagine some outcome to your liking (as opposed to "there was clearly a specific outcome/answer/resolution the author was driving for, but now we won't tell you").

So yeah, taken together these two books are a lot of fun to read, especially if you're in the market for more space opera.

later
Tom

The Reading of Words

Hi,

So I just finished The Killing of Worlds by Scott Westerfeld. And by "finished", I mean, "devoured cover-to-cover in a single evening". I don't do that too often, so that should give you some indication.

Killing of Worlds is the second half to The Risen Empire which I reviewed not too long ago. As mentioned in that post, The Risen Empire is shamefully only half a book (due to a stupid-head publisher). So you really need both these books in order to get a real story out of it. However, The Killing of Worlds wastes almost no time re-treading anything covered in the previous books. It leads in with the last chapter of Risen Empire as a prologue and then takes off at a dead sprint. Westerfeld keeps the action moving along at a quick clip and before you know it, you're thundering into the last 50 pages.

And the story actually ends. Oh there's room for another sequel or two, but unlike the Risen Empire, you don't feel utterly cheated. Whatever is left undone is not so important that you can't imagine some outcome to your liking (as opposed to "there was clearly a specific outcome/answer/resolution the author was driving for, but now we won't tell you").

So yeah, taken together these two books are a lot of fun to read, especially if you're in the market for more space opera.

later
Tom