Very good read.

It was a very good book, good pacing. Good personal realizations for the main character and sub characters.

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I...think.... that i might hate it?

Alright fair warning if you read this review there will be spoilers, my feelings are just too complicated for me not to give examples for the reasons why i feel the way i do so.... SPOILER WARNING

Things i Liked.
The writing is quite good, focused and comprehensive. Which admittedly should be a given, but thanks to auto publishing has become something of a nice bonus to books rather than the expected standard. the action is well choregraphed and easy to follow while still being gritty and brutal. The world building is absolutely fascinating and leaves you wanting to know more and more. The system is great and always has you excited to see what is coming next. Finally i like that the "villains" of the story are as much real people as anyone else in the book.
Things i really didn't like.
There are really only two things that i found i hated about the book. 1. I hate the relationship between Mira and patric. At best it is a relationship of severe co dependency . Both using the other for their own emotional needs with no real care for the other outside of that. Or at worst and frankly the one that seems most likely Patric is little more than Mira's emotional support pet, a pet mind you that she is very neglective of until she needs reassurance that she is not the bad guy. A job that patric performs with all the simple minded sincerity his little dumb puppy heart can muster. There is very little actual chemistry between the two of them and a lot of Twilight level angst going on. Patric being Belle in this scenario and Mira being an even bigger emo evil bloodthirsty monster than Edward could ever manage, also if Twilight was stuck in middle school. seriously the difference between who Mira is when not around patric is super jarring. One minute she is sleeping with a guy to sabotage his career the next she is blushing like a sheltered school girl over holding patrics hand. Yes the author tries to explain the disconnect away, but it is just to big a leap. it feels like she is fostering a relationship with a literal child and it is pretty gross at times.
2. I. HATE. Loathe. Despise. Mira. She is the worst kind of evil, self righteous, self entitled, self centered, a bigot incapable of even the slightest bit of empathy for anyone other than herself. Yes she spends a lot of time agonizing over her actions with endless introspection, however actions speak louder than words, and her actions renders all her words insincere and false. She is a plague of death that cares not at all for those she destroys in her path. Hell being outside her path isn't exactly safe sense she often goes out of her way to render everyone's life worse. One could make the argument that she is a brainwashed child soldier, but her introspections make it very clear that she is fully aware of what her actions are. Yet when put to the test she will choose the worst possible outcome that hurts the greatest amount of people, because in the end she has zero empathy for those that are unfortunate enough to find themselves stuck living on HER world. She is a sociopath who can mimic humanity for fleeting moments, but ultimately fails the final test every time.

Overall? I have no idea, i honestly wanted to return this book and the first one as soon as i finished it, but so far I haven't pulled that trigger, even though i cannot see anyway in which Mira could possibly redeem herself after what she does in this book, i still want to.... hate read the next one. I ' am really glad it doesn't come out til August, i need time to recover after what this book did to me.

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1 person found this helpful

Amazing, just amazing

This book is amazing, the story is incredible. Im left wondering whats next for the mc after this book. If the next book is anything like this one its going to be good.

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inner monologue

I really loved the story, the world, and the system. But the writing, the constant inner monologue, rehashing of the same thoughts about regret and determination and stubbornness and being a monster and everything else, made the book very tedious to get through. Especially for the audiobook. At least on the written side, it was easy to skim and Skip past the constant reflection and repetition of the skills that allowed her to survive whatever situation was happening. _PSI_

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Thrilling.

Ok so this one took me a while to complete b/c although Mira is an amazingly fun and entertaining bad-ass she is also very emotional and somewhat of a sociopath so I needed processing time. Overall, the story was well thought out and very well written. The narration as always was superb. I can’t wait to find out what happens next. Bring on book three, I am ready!

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It’s decent

Got kinda boring near the middle and her self dialogue gets kinda tedious but it was a good listen

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I Wanted to Like This.

I don't write reviews unless I am blown away by a book or I really wanted to like a book but couldn't.
I have listened to books 1-3 didn't finish 3, I still have over 2 hours left on Book 3. The concept is great, the world building is unique. It goes wrong when it comes to the characters. The story arc is a little one note in all of the books. The main character is 2 dimensional and there is absolutely no growth or change. Maybe it gets better in book 4 but i just can't.

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not to my taste

I got through book 1 and was excited for book 2, but I just can't stand the MC. Rich girl in a cyberpunk world who ran away from home (but not to hard). gets gifted Uber powerful relic and cybernetics and training to prepare against the incoming alien invasion. *spoiler from book one* uncle/crimelord/badass gets betrayed and killed along with a whole town. character immediately swears blood, death and vengeance. all well and good, but she just just keeps HARPING on it over and over and over. while fix review later, MCs lack of empathy and general give a fuck for collateral damage turned me off.

voice acting is excellent.

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It's... fine

The story, setting, and world are all fine - though fairly banal. That's not a problem. The narration is really one-note and she misspeaks some works, like using the verb form of refuse when the sentence was obviously using the noun form, which in english are pronounced differently and have different definitions. There's also entire 10-15 min long chapters of just reading stat pages... gotta fast forward.

The real issue is the writing though. Fully half the book is just the main character doing hyper repetitive introspection. Like, "I worried if I was becoming that which I hated. Perhaps all my actions were making me into the very thing I fought. If that was the case, I was becoming the very thing that I was trying to remove from this world. Was I the bad guy here?" There are moments in which the exact same phrase or word is used 5 or more times in less than two pages. It's so bad it makes me think it was actually multiple drafts of the same sentence that they forgot to remove or edit out.

You can go 20 minutes without the character actually doing or saying anything in the world. Just hyper obsessing over their every action. And the worst part is the edgelord nonsense. Like EVERYONE is leering at this girl ALL the time, and she has to 'fight back the urge' to kill them - literally kill them - every single time. Queue violence fantasy self analysis scene AGAIN. Supposedly she's an unassuming 19 yo girl, but in one scene where a guy just doesn't seem to believe she can handle herself in a to the death combat arena (very fair, considering she isn't in armor, no scars, no visible weapons) she feels so.... disrespected?... that the reader has to listen to her internal monologue piss and moan about how she's tempted to kill this guy with her bare hands just to show him how wrong he is, despite how that would ruin her plans and everything she has worked for for 6 months or more. Really juvenile power fantasy nonsense. The author also forgets details, like the character is lamenting not having brought their armor one page and thanking god for their armor in the next second. Or used all the ammo for a gun, then the next fight she's using that gun even though she's not resupplied.

That said there's some strings of action without any of that crap that are very entertaining. Honestly this book should have been edited down by about half. A tight 13 hours would have been way better.

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