The Digital Renaissance: Review: Silver Queendom

Tuesday, October 25, 2022

Review: Silver Queendom

Silver Queendom by Dan Koboldt
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I was initially drawn to this book from the reviews that compared this to the Black Company … one of my favorite series. Now having finished the book … I don’t see it. There was also a comparison to Ocean’s Eleven … I don’t see it. To be fair, it is a solid story, but I just didn’t seem to connect with anything.

There are no major mistakes to callout, but the feel comes across as a mechanical “paint by the numbers” effort. There were plenty of new/foreign terms … but they didn’t seem to fit well as if the only reason the invented word was used was to be different … which made them a little awkward. The magic system, based upon manipulating silver through metallurgy, was interesting, but not well developed beyond that. The chapters are short and quick … just like all of the encounters with the various antagonists, which seem mostly formulaic.

The crew of four, Darin Evie, Tom and Kat, were mildly interested, but they were also still fairly shallow at the end and fairly predictable, with little to recommend them going forward … which was a surprise given that the first 80% of the book was build up and character intros. In fact, that first part made it difficult to get to the good/last part. The actual heist. This was actually fun and well done, but the strong finish only manages to raise the total over all impression to 3*.

I was given this free advance review copy (ARC) ebook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.

#SilverQueendom #NetGalley.

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My Ratings Explained ...

[ ***** ] Amazing Read - Perfect story, exciting, engrossing, well developed complex characters, solid plot with few to no holes, descriptive environments and place settings, great mystery elements, realistic dialogue, believable reactions and behaviors; a favorite that I can re-read many times.
[ **** ] Great Read - Highly entertaining and enjoyable, exciting storyline, well developed characters and settings, a few discrepancies but nothing that can’t be overlooked. Some aspect of the story was new/refreshing to me and/or intriguing. Recommended for everyone.
[ *** ] Good Read - Solid story with a 'good' ending, or has some other redeeming feature. Limited character development and/or over reliance on tropes. Noticeable discrepancies in world building and/or dialog/behavior that were distracting. I connected enough with the characters/world to read the entire series. Most of the books I read for fun are here. Recommended for fans of the genre.
[ ** ] Okay Read - Suitable for a brief, afternoon escape … flat or shallow characters with little to no development. Over the top character dialog and/or behavior. Poor world building with significant issues and/or mistakes indicating poor research. Excessive use of trivial detail, info dumps and/or pontification. Any issues with the story/characters are offset by some other aspect that I enjoyed. Not very memorable. May only appeal to a niche group of readers. Recommended for some (YMMV).
[ * ] Bad Read - Awkward and/or confusing writing style. Poor world building and/or unbelievable (or unlikeable) characters. Victimization, gaslighting, blatant abuse, unnecessary violence, child endangerment, or any other highly objectionable behaviors by Main characters. I didn't connect with the story at all; significant aspects of this story irritated me enough that I struggled to finished it. Series was abandoned. Not recommended.