Horus Rising

It's slow, weirdly paced and feels like a 1998 video game, both in its odd way of throwing the reader between scenes ("and now they're at a different planet! doing something else!) and in the stilted dialogue and the attempts at being Deep in a way that will appeal to a 14 year old boy.

Overall it was a solid book. While sometimes dwelling a little too long, the book does a really good job at exploring the philosophy of ideologies born out of times of conflict/war/persecution and how those ideologies hold as the world around them change. Far deeper than I expected, and more than enough to convince me to read another book in the series.

A fairly quick read that entertains and provides enough exploration of ideas about how we choose to interact with the world around us that it's certainly not just a throwaway. I enjoyed it.