vnorthw

This book had a lot of really great things going for it, but it ultimately fell flat for me.

The story focuses on two nations that, due to a series of more-or-less misunderstandings, ends up in a war. To tell the story, Anderson gives us characters on both sides of the conflict and from all social classes. Seeing the war through the eyes of so many people was an interesting approach and I loved that it highlighted the fact that neither side was evil or wrong.

However, I didn't feel a connection to most of the characters and it took me over half of the book to warm up to those characters that I did connect with.

Even more disappointing, I didn't feel like the story had any direction other than the passage of time. It read more as a stringing together of several small conflicts rather than one overall arc. This is the first in a trilogy so I expected a cliff hanger or a desire to keep going, but I didn't get either - the story just ended and I don't think I'll read more.