Those Above by Daniel Polansky

They enslaved humanity three thousand years ago. Tall, strong, perfect, superhuman and near immortal they rule from their glittering palaces in the eternal city in the centre of the world. They are called Those Above by their subjects. They enforce their will with fire and sword.

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Random pick from the library.

Spoiler level: light.

This (cropped) synopsis (by me) is vaguely misleading, which I guess is better than a lot of them, but still.  Are they ridiculously hard to write or something?  Is there some sort of union block getting in the way?  Or is it that the authors are always seriously constrained by marketing people who need key words in there to excite their demographics.  Honestly I don’t really read them any more I’ve gone back to judging a book by its cover and if on Goodreads, its average rating.  For the most part it’s been working pretty well, though I did get in trouble with a book recently because of a recommendation by Neil Gaiman on the cover.  More on that later, maybe.

Now.  Usually I wouldn’t mention something like this because it feels almost spoilerish but I’m pretty convinced in this case that it’s just a result of the terrible synopsis.  Those above aren’t human.  They aren’t gods or humans who’ve ascended.  They’re a different species entirely.  You wouldn’t be able to confuse them with a human if you put them side by side.  They’re humanoid, but it seems like they’re more closely related to birds.  Just something that shocked me when I started reading, given the phrasing on the back cover.

Also, they fully skipped over mentioning one of the characters that hold one of the four viewpoints.

Not a promising start.

I think most of the issues I have with this book is the way he’s handled the jumping from one character to the next.  In the beginning they switch after every short chapter.  I feel like this is a mistake.  It makes for disparate threads that you have to grip, and then ignore with every new character, though thankfully it soon enough becomes clear where everyone fits in the wider world.  Still I thought the shifting was too often and not always dictated by the story but rather this underlying order that he wanted to impose, A, B, C, D, repeat.

Overall I found the supposedly intelligent characters not really living up to the hype.  I appreciate the way he tried to balance each character, a la Game of Thrones, but I just ended up not liking anyone (except for Bas, but I’m fairly certain that’s just my own defective character reaching out).  The book as a whole could have used more work, some questionable decisions rethought.  There was a fair amount of words thrown in that seemed specifically chosen to make the book sound intelligent.  The end feeling was more grandiloquent and/or pedantic.  It was like one of those inexperienced teachers who tries to make interesting things educational.  The plot plodded along, though there was some effort made to make it seem more exciting.

Finally, though this is more like a pet niggle and not a point, the units of measurement are different.  I’ve had this before, I mean, you can’t read fantasy without occasionally coming across it but the thing that bugged me was the fact that he used words that are already in the English language and have other meanings.

I sound down on it, I realise, but apart from all this it wasn’t terrible.  I’ve read worse in the search for better, and I did read the next book.  It is just a duology after all.

No, not really worth it.