Book #62 of 2024: The Iron Children

[thistlechaser]

The Iron Children by Rebecca Fraimow.

Quick synopsis: Set on a fantasy world, two nations are at war. One of them uses soldiers bound in armor. While a small troop is traveling over a mountain, an accident happens. Things are made worse by a spy among them.

Brief opinion: I think there was a good story somewhere in this book, but style and writing choices made it really hard to find.

Plot: Two fantasy nations are at war. One, the smaller one, raises orphan children and once they're old enough, removes most of their bodies, placing them in knight-like armor. Very little of their physical body remains, just their mind in the armor. That kind of soldier is called a Dedicate.

Asher is in training to become a commander to the Dedicates. She'll lose all of her body, only her mind will be in the armor, but she'll have telepathic control over the Dedicates.

Asher and a small handful of Dedicates are traveling over a mountain when various bad things happen and they end up with just a fraction of their "men".

The spy had only intended to be with their troop for a few days, but ended up getting cut off and so stuck with the Asher and the Dedicates.

Writing/editing: Other than Asher, none of the characters had a gender, which made for such confusing writing. A bunch of Dedicates sitting in a circle. "They looked to them." Who is doing the looking? Or are all of them doing it? Are the looking at one Dedicate? Or all of them?

In addition to that, there were multiple POVs, separated only by an extra line break. It was really easy to miss when a POV character changed. All POV characters were third, except one was in first.

What I Liked/What I Didn’t Like: I had such trouble following the story. I was endlessly tripping over the pronouns and the change of POV characters. It wasn't until the 50% point of the book that I got into the story, and even then I was just mentally tripping up nonstop as I read.

Rating: 1-Hated / 2-Disliked / 3-Okay / 4-Liked / 5-Loved: ⭐️⭐️ ½ - 2.5 stars. I'll round up to "Okay" on Goodreads.