Review by not_nosferatu - Silent Sounds

not_nosferatu 's review for:

Silent Sounds by Annait L.J.

2.0

adventurous mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Complicated

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

Won this through a Storygraph giveaway ages ago, finally got around to reading it. I got so mad about the half-assed world-building (WHY PICK A SCI-FI SETTING IF YOU REFUSE TO ENGAGE WITH THE “SCI” PART??) around the 54% mark that I really wanted to DNF, but couldn’t for Reading Challenge Reasons. The author has a good writing style and there was a lot of care in creating the characters, but I’m not going to bother with the sequel because I’ll just start thinking about the literal-planet-sized-holes in the worldbuilding again. Am I too focused on a few throwaway lines that my review became unfair? Yes and I recognize that, but it was the only thing I could think about when reading this.

Pros:

Writing flows well, using italics to indicate spoken word was a nice choice (it’s not consistent but the attempt is appreciated). Pacing’s good and the tension is well-maintained throughout the book. The plot is interesting and (aside from the “world”building) it’s a decent story.

I’m a fan of how it’s not “a utopia except the Old Tongue-“. There are still actual societal and cultural problems unrelated to basic survival or war, which is a nice change for something set on ‘not Earth’.

Physical descriptions of characters are great! The author put a lot of care into them throughout the book, to the point that “lovingly crafted” is a very apt description.

Cons:

The explanation containing worldbuilding, or at least a version of it, should’ve happened sooner, such as “when Emrie was teaching it to her students”. Waiting until 33% into the book was too long.

All the narrators ‘sound’ the same, and did we *really* need a fourth one halfway through the book? And then a fifth at the 70% mark???

Verb tenses/conjugations need some more work.

The only queer rep is the main antagonist, and not even in an interesting way. Why include it at all if that’s the case?

Wouldn’t the genealogy tests have reported that Zillayah’s mom isn’t her bio mom? Or was that actually a simple confirmatory blood test

Any sort of worldbuilding greater than coming up with a country is absolutely nonexistent, which is INSANE given the setting of “1000 years after humans colonized a planet not in our solar system”. There are some WILD implications, most of which I had to retype from angry texts I sent while reading:

What the hell is up with technology in this setting? “they left Earth 1000 years ago” but the most complex tech that’s given page-time are FaceTime and laptops. So like, what happened that technology stalled for a millennium and/or everything post-2019 was forgotten? How did we revert to multiple pseudo-monarchies, and how does the kingdom-containing-countries system even work? Why are there no robots like ANYWHERE? Are space travel and implants just Not A Thing? Why are buses/trains the main Distance Transport instead of like. Flight akin to the space flight that got humans here (“oh but the pilots wouldn’t be able to see ground control signing-“ Morse code beeps)??? We went from “flying will never happen” to jumbo&fighter jets in less than a century, my guy. You can’t ignore a lack of technological advances, and saying “oh it was like a lesser version of Dune’s Butlerian Jihad but it wasn’t relevant” WILL NOT WORK because of the damn malfunctioning “polygraph” (that’s a separate rant but the thing that is called a polygraph is definitely not a polygraph and is mechanically inconsistent between paragraphs). AND IN 1000+ YEARS AFTER WE COLONIZED ANOTHER GOD.DAMN.NOT-HOME-SOLAR-SYSTEM.PLANET. NO ONE WAS ABLE TO COME UP WITH ANYTHING BETTER THAN PSEUDO-SPECIESISM, ASL, AND TEXTING. AND SPEAKING OF SPECIESISM WHAT ABOUT THE ALIENS. JESUS CHRIST YOU MENTION “oh there was a native population already on the planet we are able to reproduce with that can speak” BUT IF THEY’RE HUMAN (OR EVOLUTIONARILY CLOSE ENOUGH THAT WE CAN PRODUCE FERTILE OFFSPRING WITH THEM) THEN HOW TF DID *THEY* GET HERE BECAUSE I *HIGHLY* DOUBT ITS CONVERGENT EVOLUTION???

Also, what about blind people in this world, if the primary communication form is reliant on sight and sound-based communication is entirely nonexistent?

Content Warnings