Heart of Gold, by Sharon Shinn, failed to hold my interest. The cover looked good, the blurbs suggested an interesting story, but when I actually cracked open the book it just kind of…died. There was too much in the way of obvious gender-reversal, and I just wasn’t hooked by the blue/gold class struggle motif. The author’s style didn’t really hold my interest either; one too many clichés and too much in the way of telling rather than showing. She could learn a few lessons from Iain Banks about how to immerse a reader in an alien culture right off the bat. Even the murder that takes place a few dozen pages in is told in an excruciatingly roundabout method.
This isn’t a terrible book; it’s competently written and readers with different tastes might like it. But I put it down after about 50 pages.
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