Petty complaint first: I couldn't get over the fact that the main character was named Tha, and it didn't seem to be short for anything, she was just Tha even though all her relations had normal earth names. Every time it was at the beginning of a sentence I misread it as "The" and got confused.
Otherwise, the world-building just didn't work for me. I didn't buy the existence of a human society where no one had committed a murder for a thousand years - ten years would have been a stretch! - and I especially didn't buy the existence of an intensely oppressive regime that nonetheless adhered to this ban on fatal violence. That background threat of death is necessary to keep oppressive structures in place.
Basically I guess McKenzie and I have different basic understandings of how human beings work - she seems to think all you have to do is forbid something and people will obey, never mind the experience to the contrary offered by every major world religion - and I don't find her take believable and that undermines everything else in the book.
no subject
Otherwise, the world-building just didn't work for me. I didn't buy the existence of a human society where no one had committed a murder for a thousand years - ten years would have been a stretch! - and I especially didn't buy the existence of an intensely oppressive regime that nonetheless adhered to this ban on fatal violence. That background threat of death is necessary to keep oppressive structures in place.
Basically I guess McKenzie and I have different basic understandings of how human beings work - she seems to think all you have to do is forbid something and people will obey, never mind the experience to the contrary offered by every major world religion - and I don't find her take believable and that undermines everything else in the book.