[Archren]

Well, having finished "Killing of Worlds" now, I have to agree with the sentiment around here that this is all pretty average. It was OK, not terriblly bad, nor terribly good. I was a little disappointed when the Big Secret was revealed; I had hoped that it would be something a little more Earth-shaking. Iit seemed a little prosaic to me. And frankly, even at the end the story it still didn't fully resolve. After all,

Alexander is still out there, headed for Home, not having fulfilled his potential at all, same with Commander Zai.

It almost seemed like there should be a third book, but I don't think I would read it if there was one.

Did it seem to anyone else that the Emporer character was sorely under-developed? As really the main antagonist of the story, he didn't get a lot of face time, and almost nothing about his character was shown. That was a big oversight, I think.

BTW, I understand now about the relay station & why Alexander needed to get there. That was actually pretty cool, and it took me by surprise.

One more quibble: how many times can Zai's ship escape from certain death before it gets unbelievable & annoying? About three. Six or seven was really pushing it too far. For a little while I was almost rooting for it to finally be destroyed, just to put it out of its misery. This sort of plotting might have been OK in the serial pulp era ("Tune in next week to see how the amazing ship surives THIS attack!") but it got on my nerves a little bit once I was into the second book.

[emohawk]

I have to agree with your comments Achren. In his defense though, I read somewhere that he just wanted to write the book he would have loved to read as a teenager so for what it is, it's a pretty reasonable effort. I think when comparing apples with apples it fares decently, but when comparing it with the whole gambit of fruit selections available one can probably find something more attuned to ones tastes.

[Archren]

That's a really fair assessment, emohawk. And I think that if I had read this when I was segueing from the classics (Asimov/Clarke/Heinlein) to the moderns I probably would've liked it a lot.

Admittedly, I still liked it. I've got a big soft spot for space opera (am enjoying Walter Jon William's Dread Empire series and am a big fan of Elizabeth Moon's Serrano series) and this fit in quite well. I bet you anything that if I hadn't been writing about it for the book club & hadn't been thinking about it so analytically I would've read it; thought "well that was light & fun" and then moved on with my life. ;)

[KrullSlayer]

I just finished KOW.
My main motivation to read it was that the ending of the first book was such a painful cliffhanger.

If you disliked the The Risen Empire you must read KOW. Although it does not rise above the same old sci-fi novel, it does make the read worth the while.

I would give The Risen Empire a 5.0/10.0 but KOW pushes the whole story to a 7.5/10.0

I agree that the battle at the beginning of KOW was a bit long. By the middle of KOW I actually enjoyed jumping around into different character's minds. For example one chapter is about Laurent Zai. Something happens and you start to wonder what Hobbes thinks of it. The next chapter is from her viewpoint which solves your wondering.

I predicted what Alexander wanted the entanglement facility for. But once he got it, I thought he would become much more aggressive.

I liked the relationship between H_rd and Rana.

I disliked the empire's secret. I knew that the secret would tear the empire apart, but I thought it would be something more dramatic.

If Westerfeld was trying to write a story that he would have liked reading when he was growing up, he succeeded. If you compare this story to the old classics, this story fits right in. Clashing cultures, FTL transmittions, AI, war, and a love story(on many levels).

[FicusFan]

You know I think even less of Westerfeld after hearing his rationalization for writing a sub-standard book. The book wasn't sold with an "Excuse me, just kidding: Simulated SF Product Within' sticker on the cover.

If he was motivated by books he read when he was younger, great. If he wanted to recreate it fine, but do something worthwhile. There is a whole new take on Space Opera that is being done, and there is no reason he couldn't have tried to take his past influence and worked out a good story.

He did have some interesting ideas and set some good hooks for perhaps meatier bits of the story, but he just abandonned it all. The announcement that he did it on purpose just adds insult to injury.

[LordBalthazar]

A fine half a book with a lot of imaginative elements that ultimately fails to satisfy on a number of levels. I found Risen Empire to be one of the most inventive novels I've read in terms of the alien worlds created - the two warrings races were particularly well detailed. If only Westerfeld had given us real, fleshed-out characters, this could have been a truly great book. I mean half-book. The only character with any depth whatsoever was Nara. Everyone else was a cypher. Things happened to them and they certainly displayed emotions (Hobbes sad and humiliated when she realizes Zai is in love with someone else; Zai as happy as a 12 year old when he finds out Nara cares enough about him to suggest he not commit suicide), but they felt like flat constructs going through the motions - Zai in particular, a by-the-book military man who does a complete about-face on everything he knows for the love of a woman. Really? So much of the interaction between the various individuals in this demi-novel felt forced, a necessary going-through-motions, while the author spends chapters upon chapters lovingly delineating the various battle sequences.

Still, lots of great, very interesting ideas that engaged me on an intellectual level not unlike a good issue of New Scientist (with the last three pages containing the conclusions to the various articles missing). If it had engaged me on an emotional level, I might have even picked up the back half.

Finally, and if anyone could answer my personal curiosity as it would satisfy my questioning the author's ability to actually write a well thought-out story: at half-book's end, why do Hobbes and Zai go through the trouble of concocting the elaborate faux assassination scenario? Wouldn't it have been easier (and less dangerous though, admittedly, not quite as narratively exciting) to simply arrest the mutineers?