Too Like the Lightning

OKAY oh my goodness I'm finally letting this one go.

I'm not going to give it any stars because I don't think it's fair. This is one that I feel like I can only fairly rate if I stuck it out to the end, but I did not.

So here's what I loved - everything about Bridger and sensayers and the set-sets and the social and technical and moral world-building. LOVED it. Like, I ate it up. Those were the moments I had to get off the bus or something and I walked around in the world with my nose in this book. The moments that I had to ask people to wait a sec because I was just in the middle of a section and just give me a few minutes, I'll be with you when the chapter is done.
What I didn't love - the politics. I found it SO BORING. Part of it was that there were a lot of names of people and groups and I couldn't keep them straight and just reading through wasn't helping me to make sense of anything. Part of it was the way that Mycroft was presenting it just jumbled things. Part of it was that I actually didn't care about the petty internal machinations of the political players. I'd hit a section about some politician or another calling Mycroft in to be his eyes and ears or ply him for information or what have you and my eyes would glaze over. I'd try to read through because I thought that maybe it would have an important bearing on something I found interesting later on but it wouldn't stick in my head. I started skimming until I saw Bridger or Carlyle again, then would be right into it, then I'd hit another political section and just completely lose it. I held on to this book for way longer than I should have because of how awesome I found some of it, and maybe in the future I'll be in a mood where I can get through the stuff I'm resistant to right now, but for now it's not worth it. I thought I could just skip the stuff I didn't like but that's not going to be very satisfying for me, so here I am putting this book down. Which I'm kind of devastated about! I'll probably try to come back to it later.