I was provided a eARC copy of Making History by K.J. Parker thanks to Tor Publishing and NetGalley. I was very excited to start reading this short novel. The premise hinges on a group of scholars being forced by the usurping tyrant of their kingdom to make up an ancient civilization and history as a justification for a war the tyrant wants to wage on a neighboring kingdom. This seemed like the plot of a stellar story and novel. However, by the time I reached the last page of this story I felt let down and disappointed that a novel with such a strong potential could end up so underwhelming. Overall, I felt that Making History was a missed opportunity and story worth of a full length novel (or series even) that was at times boring, others confusing, and rushed. While I would not strongly recommend this novel if you are looking for something to blow you away. If you are looking for a short and just okay novel to fit into your reading schedule this would be an interesting one to look at.
Rating: ⭐⭐
Flat Characters and Minimal Development
Given that the idea behind this story had such strong potential, the novel is hurt by its length and pacing. Chapters that move the story forward, provide important context, or are just generally interesting are short and quick. On the other hand, chapters that felt like filler seemed to drag on without any real importance. The main character is a linguist and often went on long diatribes about the finer points of language. To be fair, the MC does provide fair warning that they are about to start these lectures and gives the reader the change to skip ahead. But! The novel is only 128 pages long. Is it really fair to ask the reader to skip a good portion of the total novel to avoid these parts?
On the topic of the MC, we experience the events of the novel through his perspective. He seems to be a typical stuffy professor at first. Boring and flat. But as the story progresses we naturally learn more about him and his (actually quite interesting background). Just when I felt like I was learning more about this character, how he came to be in this situation, and how his past might help him out of it the story ends in such a whirlwind fashion that I felt like I had whiplash!
Aside from this main character, the remainder of the cast is boring and flat. Faceless would be a very apt word to describe the other academics caught up in the story with our main character. I found them to all be so boring that the length of this paragraph is about all I’m willing to dedicate to them.
A Rushed Climax and Missed Opportunity
Without too many spoilers, I’ll attempt to address the issues with the story’s climax and the missed opportunity it was. Around the halfway mark of the novel we learn that someone is hip to he ruse that the greedy tyrant is playing and aware of the work that our group of scholars is doing. The question naturally then is who is the mole and how are they getting access to this information? That’s a super interesting and exciting plot twist! I was hooked at this point after struggling to make it through the entire first half of the novel. Expecting the fuller picture to materialize slowly and deliberately I was very disappointed when the entire mystery is revealed in the span of 1 paragraph in the last pages in the book. The climax to this mystery felt so rushed and so poorly done that I had to sit my Kindle down and say to myself “That was awful!” This was a missed opportunity on part of the author and I think 100% is due to this story being told in 128 pages when it deserved more.
Strong Potential & Miss Opportunities
I have to say it again. This novel had so much potential and contained so many missed opportunities. The story deserved more pages to be told than it was given and I would love to see it expanded in the future. I’ll give it two start for right now and keep my fingers crossed that it gets the treatment it deserves in the future.