Pippa DaCosta

Oh well, what a disaster. There are quite a few things I admire about this book but there are so many technical problems it ruins it all.

The author has the guts to "go there" in various ways which I enjoyed a lot. She is not afraid to actually play out the consequences of uncomfortable outcomes. I am sick tired of everything ending well every time, be it because of plot armor or some ridiculous plot device like the unexpected rescue by the side character.

I loved the sci-fi setting with faeries and their magic as a major force in it. The world didn't just feel like a backdrop to facilitate the romance plot which is usually what I find when reading RH sci-fi.

But there are so many problems in it all.
Let's start with a somewhat pedantic one. Water being a rarity is just absurd. Yea, not having enough water for a big population could totally be a thing but the book goes further than that. Clean water in any quantity is apparently so rare that a goldfish glass full of it is worth tens of thousands which doesn't make any sense. The only possible explanation for it all is that they have some chemical alternative to water that everything runs on which is ridiculous because they obviously have enough oxygen to keep breathing and hydrogen is literally the by far most abundant element in the entire universe both of which are the only ingredients needed for water. Nowadays this might be a problem but for a space-faring civilization? No way. And effective water recycling is a core requirement for early space travel anyway.

I'm not even gonna talk about the technical side of computers, hacking, AI, and so on in detail because the book didn't even try in that regard. Most of the stuff that is mentioned is just bastardized as plot-device when convenient with little regard for consistency or logic.

The book makes no attempt to reach any level of hard sci-fi physical accuracy. No gravity, no conservation of momentum, no fuel energy density, and so on. This is not meant as a criticism but just as a clarification to potential readers.

The main character is a huge contradiction. I get that people are generally not fully coherent in their motivations and that contradictions can make characters seem more nuanced and more interesting because of these inner conflicts but not in this case. The main problem is that this main character has this insanely soft side that contradicts everything else to a degree I can not possibly suspend disbelief for. This character would probably jump off a cliff to save a cute puppy but at the same time, supposedly murdered all her childhood companions just for some praise without a second thought(mild). And it's not a change of heart through character development either. Her supposed compassion only appears as a plot device to make her act completely against her better judgment and personality and is mostly used as an instant-TSTL button.

There is a lot of extreme stupidity for plot convenience going around in general. It's not limited to the MC but affects all relevant characters at some point. If you don't earn the buildup but cheat with cheap plot devices, the payoff won't have the intended impact either. So I ended up just rolling my eyes a lot in scenes that were intended to be very tense and emotional.

General motivations for a lot of the characters make no sense whatsoever and are obviously just necessities for plot development. It's so bad in some cases that the author didn't even attempt to find any kind of explanation for her bullshit at all.

Then we have the constant sexual attraction to everything hot and male to a stupid extent even in the most inappropriate situations. Being tortured and the torturer turns away? I would like to lick those muscles and squeeze his tight ass, ok, back to being tortured. So, this didn't actually happen in this book but it might as well have. That is the level of inappropriateness it reaches sometimes. At least that isn't being used as a plot device much but it got irritating fast nonetheless. Get it together and have some self-respect for god's sake. Yea, there is some magical attraction thingy going on there in some cases but that just goes way too far regardless.

Something I respected about the romance aspect is that she didn't end up meeting and shagging her entire harem which I fully expected considering how horny she seems all the time. I am not even sure how many members of the future harem we have met so far and she hasn't had anything serious with any of them yet.(very mild)

The final plot twist came out of nowhere. There were a few hints that in retrospect can be construed as hints but they were all so vague and the twist so much out of left field that I am calling bullshit.
There is just way too much information directly contradicting the twist to be at all believable. It's just another extremely cheap attempt at creating emotional investment and conflict that totally fell flat for me. It was probably specifically intended to hook the reader for the next volume and you know what? It got me. Fuck you
In typical fashion for me, this was a pretty scathing review all things considered and it reflects my enjoyment of the book.
I am just not sure what is to blame here. Either the author just bit off way more than she could chew in the initial planning phase for this series and just couldn't invest enough time into fixing all the kinks or she just didn't care because she knew her typical audience didn't pick up on much.
I can understand that as an author that needs to earn a living you can not just waste infinite time on a series. You need your words to earn money eventually if you want to keep paying rent so there is a pretty tight limit on how much time you can spend adjusting stuff. I believe this is also the reason one frequently finds books with insane differences in quality from the same author. In one the author just messed up a lot more in the initial draft but had not enough time to rework it thoroughly enough despite being aware of its weaknesses. That is just life. But to be honest I don't think all the laziness in this book can be excused that way and at least some of the problems can be ascribed to a general lack of care.

PS:
Holy shit is this review long but I don't have the time to write a shorter one right now.
Did I mention the cover of this book is gorgeous?… (meer)

This series is an odd one.
On the one hand, it quickly captured my interest and held it across 3 books.
But on the other hand, I can understand why the reviews are so mixed.
The pacing is relentless the drama is strong and the mood is dark. Very dark.
The series commits all kinds of pretty bad writing sins. From the universally hated fake-out death over no consistency or logic whatsoever to a plot hole minefield. And the reader is generally the last to know anything. But everything went by so quickly that all the contradictions, flaws, and other missteps became irrelevant 5 minutes later because the entire situation is completely different. The problem with cheap plot devices and plot holes etc. usually is how you normally look back on the framework the entire story is built upon. The more lazy writing sins there are the wonkier and more unstable the entire structure becomes and the more fundamental the rotten parts are the more they stick out and frustrate me. But because so much is badly flawed and brittle but nothing really matters 10 minutes later it never really annoyed me.
At the same time, the book does a really good job of getting me attached to the characters. They are so heart-wrenchingly tragic and not in a cheesy way.
But be assured I could probably write an entire novella just about all the problems the plot and the characters have.

This series (and much of Pippa DaCostas writing in general) is a very good mirror in showing me a lot of the hypocrisy of thinking I understand what makes a good story.
This book does almost everything wrong but it still got me invested and kept me reading.
There are clearly other aspects to writing that I don't even have words for that are not spoken about in amateur reviews much if at all.… (meer)