Tag Archives: 2.5 stars

books, Reviews, science fiction, Space opera

Steel in the Blood (The Reckoning Cycle 1) by N.T. Narbutovskih

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Stars: 2.5 out of 5

I am not sure why this was published as a book. As far as story goes, it’s only Part 1 of a bigger book. The part that sets up the characters and the premise and doesn’t nothing else. By the end of Steel in the Blood, the main conflict of the story was set up, alright, but no questions were answered, there was no emotional payoff for sticking with the story so far. It just ended. So if you want to learn what this story is actually about, you have to buy the next book.

Unfortunately, there is nothing I hate more in a book than a cliffhanger designed solely to make you buy the next book, so I’m afraid that this series and I will be parting ways. Which is a shame, because from the little I have seen of the world and history in this small installment, it might be an interesting story.

The human empire has existed for thousands of years, ruled by an immortal Empress. It’s big, safe and prosperous (or so we’re told), but it has stopped growing. Innovation is discouraged, exploration is non-existent. It’s a well-oiled machine designed for one purpose only – to keep trade flowing to the capital worlds. No part of the Empire is self-sufficient. They all depend on each other for food, raw materials, trade, or goods. 

Each section of the empire is governed by members of different genelines, who have been cloned and enhanced to rule their sections for millennia as well. There has been no war in a thousand years, after the last Medicant Wars have ended. But now one is brewing…

Wonderful premise for an exciting book, right? That’s what I thought as well. I already mentioned the first problem with this story – this book is only a set-up. A transit point from one geneline is seemingly attacked by agents of another geneline, even though the Executor of that geneline never ordered the attack he is accused of. He has to find those who are responsible and clear his name or a civil war will break out. He leaves to do just that and puts his daughter in charge of their whole sector… And that’s it. That’s where the story ends.

If you are expecting answers to all the questions asked in this book, you will have to purchase the next book in the series.

My second problem is that while the world setting is intriguing, the characters are a lot less so. Erick seems very naïve and indecisive for a leader who supposedly ruled his corner of the Empire for 400 years. Bryn seems a little more interesting, but we haven’t really been in her head enough to get attached. In fact, the character I found the most interesting and whom I could empathize the most with is the Medicant. Yes, an android is has more personality than the humans in this story.

The ending also feels a bit flat – we are introduced to a whole assault team of characters we’ve never seen before who have a brief battle to capture a saboteur at a fold array. Said saboteur explodes, literally, damaging the array. The end. Again, if you were looking for answers and emotional payoff for sticking with this story for a few hours, buy the next book. Maybe the story will get better, maybe not. I am out either way.

PS: I received a free copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

books, Horror, Reviews

The Nightmare Man by JH Markert

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Stars: 2.5 out of 5

This is a hard one to review. On one hand, I liked it because it gave me a lot of the older Stephen King vibes. I love older Stephen King. On the other hand, this book has a lot of issues that just piled up the longer I read it which ultimately took away a lot of the pleasure from reading and let the frustration set in.

From what I see, this is the author’s first book and, unfortunately, it shows. There is a solid story somewhere in there. In fact, there are several solid stories that could have been several solid books. Unfortunately, the execution is a bit lacking.

As I mentioned, there is just too much stuff happening in this book. There are several serial killers and psychopaths running loose in this small town. There are nightmares galore. There is an old detective with his own secrets. There is a writer with his dark past and strange family history. There is a psychiatric asylum… It’s like the author tried to throw everything on the wall and try to make it all stick. 

Well, it makes for a very dense story where not a single thread is given enough attention to matter. And because so much information is stuffed into the book, things happen very slowly, and we also don’t have enough time to go deeper into each incident. As a result, I didn’t particularly care for any of the mares running around the little town and killing off people, or about the writer’s story, or really about the detective’s either. There is just too much happening to concentrate on.

My other issue is that there is not action in this book. Which, I realize, contradicts my previous statement that there is too much happening. Yes, things are happening, people are being murdered in horrible ways… but it’s all done “offscreen” so to say. Our protagonists either arrive at the crime scene after the fact or discuss it after the fact, or have flashbacks to some other plot point after the fact, etc. Do you see the trend there? Everything is given us through dialogues and flashbacks. In fact, I think the only time the characters are actually in the thick of the action is at the very end of the book when the mares come home. But even then, a lot of the action is told by the protagonists who arrive after the fact to discover the bloody aftermath and cooling bodies. 

Well, this might work for a little bit, but when the whole book is written in this manner, it just gets boring. There is not tension, no suspense, and there is no feeling that the characters are in clear and present danger… which is the whole point of a horror book, no? This story would have been a lot more impactful, if the author had cut out at least half of the flashbacks and put us into the action instead of having the characters retell that action to each other over a glass of bourbon afterwards. 

And finally, I’m not sure what the police procedures are in small towns, but I am positive that revealing the name of a suspect in a conversation with another suspect is illegal. Especially if that suspect is married to a reporter. Same with discussing the details of an ongoing investigation with a civilian which might or might not be tied to the killings. Yet the detectives in this story do it several times. And not only the detectives. In fact, it seems like doctor patient confidentiality, or the confidentiality of a confession are non-existent in this book as soon as it’s convenient to the plot to break them.

And honestly, the least said about that ending, the better. It feels like the author tried to tie all the loose ends from all the different stories they started in this book, and didn’t quite manage that. It was dense, jumbled, and quite unsatisfactory.

I would however say that the author has potential. I finished this book in three days, despite all my misgivings, after all. If they continue writing and honing their craft, I’m sure future books will be much better.

PS: I received an advanced copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. 

books, Reviews, science fiction, Soft Science Fiction

Mai Tais For the Lost by Mia V Moss

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 Stars: 2.5 out of 5

This was a meh book for me, even if it was very short at barely over 100 pages. 

I think the problem was that I went into the book thinking it would be a murder mystery. After all, we have a private detective, we have a murder, and we have a (sort of) investigation of that murder. Sadly, none of it is executed very well. 

I’d say that it’s good Marrow is the only private detective in that hab, because she sucks. If she had competition, she would go out of business in a heartbeat. All she does in these 100-some pages is get drunk and high and go from one party to another. Oh sure, call them “wakes” for her murdered brother, if you want to. I’ll call them pointless waste of pages. 

No seriously, what was the point of showing us these parties? To introduce the other colorful characters Marrow grew up with? To show us just how decadent and selfish the rich are? One party would have been enough for that. And if it was to make us care for some of those characters, I’m afraid the author failed. By the end of the book, I can’t remember anything about them apart from their weird names. Besides, the author doesn’t even mention if they lived or died at the end of the book, though it’s implied that they were left in imminent danger somewhere along the way.

Now let’s talk about Marrow herself. She keeps telling us that she’d been ostracized because she come from “the Poor” and was adopted into a rich family, but from all the interactions I had seen with her brother’s friends, they seem to be pretty accepting of her, even affectionate. So the “show” doesn’t support the “tell,” which to makes me doubt a lot of other assumptions Marrow has. She also sucks as an investigator. All she does during this book is get drunk or high and stumble into pieces of evidence conveniently left for her to find. Great detective she is not.

I also found the murder mystery itself rather lackluster. We really don’t get any resolution there, just more questions and loose ends. Yes, we saved the habitat from a corporate assassin, but other than that, there is no emotional payoff…

Like I said, I probably came into this book with a wrong set of expectations, and was left disappointed.

PS: I received a free copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

books, Reviews, science fiction

Midnight, Water City (Water City 1) by Chris McKinney

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Stars: 2.5 out of 5

Honestly, my reaction after finishing this book is “meh.” 

I went into this book excited about the premise. An underwater city? Humanity averting the end of the world for once? This sounded so exciting! Unfortunately, we spend little to no time at all in the actual underwater city. 

And the worldbuilding isn’t really fleshed out at all. So the mankind mostly lives underwater to stay safe from solar flares? Okay, I get get onboard with that if you explain to me how that works. How did we manage to combat the enormous pressure in the ocean depths? How do we deal with the endless night, the decompression, etc.? Our protagonist seems to zip in and out of the deepest ocean reaches to the highest mountain in a matter of minutes with no visible side effects. 

Also, how are those seascrapers built? That hints at significant advances in engineering and construction materials, especially considering that today we can barely explore the depths in what amounts to an extremely reinforced safe with small windows. Yet 100 years from now, after some major wars and natural catastrophes, mind you, humanity can build penthouses at the bottom of the ocean that are about 80% reinforced glass. I know this is sci-fi. I am ready to suspend my disbelief, but the author needs to throw me a bone – some kind of explanation is in order.

That’s a trend for every scientific advancement in this book. Things happen because they need to happen for the story, and no thought is given to how feasible they are. This approach really undermines the credibility of the story and the worldbuilding starts to wobble and break around the edges. 

But the biggest problem with this book for me is that I couldn’t care less for any of the characters. Quite frankly, they are all horrible human beings. 

The protagonist used to be a killer for hire. Yes, he killed for the greater good, or at least that’s how he justifies it, but he is still a cold-blooded murderer. Add to that that he is on his fourth marriage and and his fourth kid. He’s lost all contact with his previous wives after the divorce (apart from the one that was killed), and doesn’t even know what happened to his children. He even mentions in the story that he is in the same country as his first ex-wife at one point, but has no desire to check on them. He basically ignores his current wife and avoids his daughter, because “children never interested him.” What a wonderful human being! /end sarcasm.

And the woman he works for is even worse, especially if the story about her lying about the Killing Rock is true. Akira Kimura is a sociopath and a megalomaniac who has zero concern for anyone but herself. Her daughter is even worse. 

So the protagonist’s constant devotion to Akira feels more and more twisted and sick, the further the story progresses and the more we learn about that individual. And his unwillingness to kill Ascalon also makes no sense at all. In fact, the whole ending is a perfect example of a protagonist robbed of his agency. He didn’t make the decision in the end, circumstances did it for him, which makes the payoff extremely unsatisfying in my eyes.

All in all, this wasn’t a book I will remember. And this certainly wasn’t on of the best books I read in 2022. It was okay. It kept me interested enough to finish it, but that’s about it. I’m certainly not interested enough to pick up the next book in the series.

PS: I received a free copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

books, Dark fantasy, Fantasy, Horror, Reviews, Urban fantasy

Last Exit by Max Gladstone

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Stars: 2.5 out of 5

It pains me to give a less than stellar rating to Max Gladstone, but this is the first book of his I’ve been disappointed with. How can a book about found family, road trip, end of the world, parallel universes and so on be so… boring?

I loved this author’s Craft series. They are wonderfully imaginative and full of interesting characters and thought provoking concepts. So of course I jumped on the chance to get an ARC of this through NetGalley. And my initial state while I was reading this book, before the boredom set in, was that of bewilderment. Is this the author who wowed me with his other books? Am I reading this wrong? What is going on?

Oh, there are glimpses of the author I love in this story. There are moments that are tightly written and intensely terrifying. Like when the Cowboy first becomes aware of Sarah on the interstate, or the confrontation at the Best Western, or when Zelda is in the bug-infested tunnels under an alt New York. Those scenes had me at the edge of my seat, with my heart in my throat, terrified for the well-being of the characters…

Unfortunately, those moments of brilliance are few and far between. And they are bogged down by pages and pages of flashbacks, introspections, inner dialog about how miserable the characters are and how they think that the world is ending. It’s self-pity and self-recrimination on page upon page upon page. So you get this brilliant scene when the action is non-stop, the stakes are high, and the characters in danger… then you have 50 pages of inner monolog topped with a flashback on their first journey. Momentum – shot dead, not by the cowboy in a white hat, but by sheer boredom. In fact, I think that the book is at least 200 pages too long. My Kindle assured me that it was 400 pages long, but it felt like one of those 1000+ pages door stoppers – never-ending.

I think this approach would have worked if I cared for any of the characters, but I didn’t. They are all unlikeable, selfish people who wear their failures like a badge of honor and wallow in self-pity for most of the book. And since the reader has to follow them and be privy to their most inner thoughts, it makes for a very painful read, and not in a good way. 

Also, it is constantly hinted that their first journey to find the crossroads went horribly wrong and resulted in Sal’s downfall, but the book drags the actual story over pages and pages of hints and self-pity. By the time we actually learn what happened it feels… anti-climatic? I was like, “So all this misery is because of this? Are you kidding me?” Not a good thing when Sal’s downfall and Zelda’s guilt about it are the cornerstone of this story. 

By the end of the book I was so bored with the story, that I just skimmed through the last 10%. Also not good. The ending is supposed to be rewarding. It’s supposed to justify the effort the reader put into sticking with 400 pages of story. It was anything but that. And the big reveal and twist wasn’t all that shocking either. 

When I had finished the other books of this author, I had a sense of satisfaction and joy. I had wanted to savor the story, to re-read passages that I liked the most. When I finished Last Exit, all I had is a sense of relief that the slog was finally over and that I could delete the ARC from my Kindle. 

I will not recommend this book. Max Gladstone is a wonderful author though, so I suggest you read his Craft series instead. 

books, Reviews, Urban fantasy, YA

The Cat Who Saved Books by Sosuke Natsukawa

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Stars: 2.5 out of 5

I’m always eager to discover new voices in literature, especially if they come from other cultures. Those authors always have very unique outlooks at life that you won’t find in our Western civilizations. It definitely broadens my horizon as a reader. So I was very eager to pick up this book when I saw it on NetGalley – a translation of an new Japanese author, and we have a talking cat who saves books? What is there not to like?

Well, the writing, as it turns out. 

The story itself is interesting and rather uplifting – we follow Rintaro, a very shy and introverted high school student, who is trying to deal with the sudden death of his grandfather, who had been his only family for all these years. It doesn’t help that Rintaro is a literal shut-in with severe social anxiety, and that the safe bubble that he’d built in his grandfather’s bookshop is about to burst. Then a talking cat appears and takes him on a fantastical adventure to save books and find his own voice. By the end of the journey, Rintaro finally discovers his own value and decides what he wants to do in life. 

It is a nice coming of age story that would definitely appeal to a younger audience… and a book I would never have picked up if I’d known it was aimed at the younger adult audience. I don’t read YA. This book just reaffirmed all the reasons why I don’t. 

The writing, as I had mentioned earlier, is simplistic at best. I don’t know if it’s due to so many nuances getting lost in translation, as they inevitably do, or if the original was written this way as well. It might have been, if it was intended for a 12+ audience, even if it was classified as General Fiction (Adult) on NetGalley.

Problem with this book is that it does a lot of telling and almost zero showing. Everything has to be spelled out for the reader. We are told how Rintaro feels and what he thinks of his few friends or people he encounters, but there is nothing in the writing that shows these reactions. It might also be that the author is Japanese, so he relies on Japanese stereotypes that would be familiar to a younger Japanese audience, but that are rather foreign to us. For example, Sayo, the class representative, came across as pushy, rude, and judgmental of Rintaro every time I read about her… Yet, he admires her for being a straight talker and very dedicated to her duties. And he just takes her verbal abuse like it’s normal. 

Another problem is that I can’t even visualize these characters. What does Rintaro look like? His only distinctive feature are his glasses that he likes to fiddle with. Same for Sayo. She could be any other Japanese high school student from the street and it wouldn’t make a difference. Or Akiba? Heck, the only character who gets a real description is Tiger the cat. Maybe that’s normal for Japanese novels. Maybe relying on common stereotypes is good enough for that audience. Me, it just left me rather bored. I felt like I was following a shadow play on the wall, where characters are blank cutouts. 

So all in all, it really wasn’t my cup of tea, even if it gave me a peak, of sorts, into the life of an insecure teenage boy living in a second hand book store somewhere in Japan. I wanted a bit more than that though, but it was probably just a matter of managing my expectations.

PS: I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

books, Ghost Story, Horror, Reviews

Nothing but Blackened Teeth by Cassandra Khaw

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Stars: 2.5 out of 5

I have a hard time formulating my feelings towards this story. On one hand, it was a quick and easy read. The amount of research that went into the Japanese folklore and traditional housing was impressive, though I kept getting a lot of Fatal Frame vibes out of it. Which isn’t bad in itself, because that game scared the crap out of me.

On the other hand, the story itself is rather meh, at least to me. 

It’s a typical haunted house story where a group of friends decide to spend the night in a reputedly haunted house and bad things happen. Well, in this case, two of the friends want to get married in that particular haunted house, like starting your married life by drawing attention of a ghost is such a good idea.

So the premise has been done before. In fact, that’s like the classic of all slasher/horror movies – a group of friends in a confined space, getting offed one by one in horrible ways… Thankfully, this is a ghost story, not a slasher story, so the bloodshed won’t be as pronounced.

My problem with this story is that I hated all of the characters. They were horrible people both to themselves and to each other. Honestly, I had no clue how they could even call each other friends. It seemed like they all hated each other guts. Nothing in their behavior spoke of friendship. Of old resentments that have been left to fester? Yes. Of past infidelities that nobody speaks about but are still there, like a big elephant in the room? Certainly. Real friendship? Not a trace. 

So it doesn’t seem plausible, at least to me, that the protagonist would insist on staying in that house and would follow along with their crazy schemes. From the little background we get on her, I would have imagined that she would have high tailed out of there ASAP, just like their friend Lin suggests. That all “I’m staying because they are my friends” line isn’t plausible when you consider the relationship dynamics described in the book. That’s no friendship. That’s co-dependent abuse.

And because all of the protagonists were such horrible people, I couldn’t care less what happened to them, which also diminished the impact of the story for me. In fact, I’m rather disappointed that more of them didn’t die in that house. If none of them had walked out of there come morning, I would have cheered, actually.

I am beginning to think that this author just isn’t for me. She is great at creating interesting and frankly disturbing worlds and premises, but I simply can’t connect with her characters. I had that problem with the Rupert Wong series, and I have that problem with this novella as well.

PS: I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. 

books, Horror, Reviews

You are invited by Sarah A. Denzil

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Stars 2. 5 out of 5

I like a good ghost story from time to time and nothing is more prone to haunting than an old monastery hidden in the mountains, especially when the snow cuts it off from the rest of the world…

This had all the ingredients to be an excellent ghost story that would keep me up at night first rushing to finish it, then being scared by imaginary sounds I hear in my own home. But unfortunately, it wasn’t so.

There are three ingredients for a good ghost story: 1) the characters, 2) the atmosphere, 3) the actual ghost (or the idea of one). It’s essential that all of them mix together perfectly, because that’s when the building becomes alive in our imagination and we root for the hapless characters and are afraid (or pity) of the apparition.

So let’s talk about the ingredient the author did well – the atmosphere. There are numerous beautifully haunting descriptions of the monastery and the mountains surrounding it. I felt the chilly drafts in the old building and the creaking doors. I could hear the howling of the wind and the answering calls of the wolves. I could see the surreal shapes of the trees peaking out of the dense fog. It was beautiful, it was sad, and it deserved a much better story that was told.

The biggest problem with this book is the characters. You HAVE to like at least some of them to care about what happens to them. Here, the characters are so one-dimensional that I couldn’t even picture them in my head. Yes, Irene is beautiful and self-absorbed. Dan is a yoga instructor… and that’s about all he contributes to the story. Nick is a cliche gamer with possible mental issues? Jules is a hapless blogger that happens to befriend our protagonist… And the protagonist… I think the protagonist is the reason why characters don’t work.

I understand the idea behind having the story told by an unreliable narrator, but Cat is too fixated on herself and her progressing schizophrenia to really care about anyone else. She only “sees” the other characters in this monastery to the extent of their reaction to her (and that reaction is often imagined and wrongly interpreted by her as well).

So how can the reader care about them when Cat doesn’t really care about them? Apart from Jules, but even then it’s a stretch.

And the final ingredient is lacking as well. The whole story behind the haunting is horrible, yes, but also too vague and inconsistent. Who is actually haunting this place? Nobody knows, Cat even less so than the others. And with her illness turning into an obsession, all her findings and suppositions are even more unreliable.

As a result, I felt disconnected from the story almost from the beginning. I read about the events that happened, but it felt like I was just looking in through a dirty window. There was no involvement and no connection whatsoever. So there was no fear or even apprehension. I could care less what happened to the animated characters on the other side of the glass. That, my friends, is a ghost story fail in my books.

PS: I received a free advanced copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

books, Horror, Reviews

in the shadow of spindrift house by mira grant

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Stars: 2.5 out of 5.

I have bad luck with Mira Grant books. Feed is about to join the permanent DNF pile because I have been stuck at 85% for over six months. Now this book…

The story has promise – four childhood friends on the cusp of adulthood decide to take one last case before disbanding their teen investigation agency. If they succeed at this case, they will earn over 7 million dollars which would have them set for whatever future paths they want to take. Only the case hasn’t been solved in decades for a reason, and the price they all will have to pay might be too high…

I picked up In the Shadow of Spindrift House because of the cover and the decidedly lovecraftian vibe the blurb gave off. To be honest, the story manages to keep that feeling, since it deals with things slithering in the deep and observing the human race run its rat race from the comfortable viewpoint of almost immortality, but the end product is underwhelming, at least for me.

My problem with Mira Grant’s books is that I can’t connect to the characters. I think it’s because the author “tells us” about their emotional connections to each other, but never really “shows us”. Case in point – we are told several times that Harley is in love with Addy, but her actions during this story don’t show this. Plus Addy is portrayed as such a negative light throughout the book that I found it hard to believe that Harley was in love with her. Especially since we don’t “see” that love in her actions, we are just told of that feeling through her thoughts. 

And that’s the case with the dynamics between all four characters. We are told they have been close since childhood. We are told they have been solving cases together and are kinda sorta famous, but we are not shown any of it. So when the horrors start creeping in and bad things happen to the characters… yes, it’s horrible, but not as shocking as it could have been, because as a reader, we haven’t seen that emotional connection that is supposed to exist between Harley and them.

And I think that is the biggest flaw of this story. Harley is too detached from everything, even before she leads her team to the doomed exploration of Spindrift House. Heck, she shows more emotion towards that house than she does towards any of her longtime friends, almost brother, and what she herself calls the love of her life… Yet, she casts them all aside seemingly without as much as an afterthought. 

Maybe if the book wasn’t this short, the author could have had time to build to the horror of this last case by showing us how the characters interacted BEFORE it all happened. Maybe actually show us some of the other cases they did together. Show us the dynamic in their little team… If we saw those connections instead of being told they exist, the stakes of what happened in Spindrift House would have been much higher and more impactful.

So to summarize, it’s a well-written book when it comes to creating descriptions and the creepy atmosphere of the house, but that suffers from the excessive case of tell, not show.

PS: I received and advanced copy of this book via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. 

books, epic fantasy, Fantasy, Reviews

cinders on the wind by louis emery (The tapestry of retha 1)

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Stars: 2.5 out of 5

I made it halfway through the book before I decided that enough was enough. Unfortunately, I am DNFing this one. I’m sure there is a good story somewhere in there, but even after reading half the book, I’m still waiting for it to grip me. The author would have benefited from a good content editor, because this book suffers from a lot of pitfalls rookie authors encounter:

1. Infodumps. We got literally the whole geopolitical introduction to the world in the first few pages. Problem with that? My eyes glazed over after a few paragraphs. I didn’t know those countries or kings or events, so I didn’t know to CARE about remembering them. So when they are mentioned again a few chapters later, I’m lost. I already forgot who was fighting with whom and why.

2. Endless flashbacks. Every time a character is introduced, we get a 4-6 pages flashback that explains their story, their motivation and what brought them to the moment in time we are reading about. EVERY SINGLE TIME!!! We are in the middle of an action scene, there is a build up in tension, then bham! new character… and a snooze-fest of a flashback. Yes, let’s kill the pace of an already very slow moving story even more.

3. Lots of tell, not enough show. You might have inferred that from the infodumps and flashbacks, but the author doesn’t know how to show very well. Or thinks that the reader isn’t intelligent enough to understand the character’s reactions and actions unless it’s fully explained to them. Trust me, the reader is smarter than you think, and being spoon fed the information is very annoying. 

4. The blurb is misleading. That young Seer mentioned in the blurb? Haven’t heard or seen her after the first 3 chapters or so. The Kingsguard that is supposed to protect her on her journey? He is off to a neighboring kingdom waging war for his king. There is no mention of that journey and I am halfway through the book. Instead we have 4 characters stuck in different locations doing seemingly unconnected things. There is talk of a rebellion, but who is rebelling, and who is attacking whom is cryptic to me. Probably because my brain switched off during the 6 page infodump in chapter one.

5. I don’t think the author has a very clear idea about his own mythology and divine system. He mentions that the main divinity is the Dragonmother and that there are a bunch of minor gods. The kingdom where most of the action takes place worships the Dragonmother… yet their elite soldiers are called God’s Burden? Yes, with a capital G…

So after wading through half the book and battling with the above mentioned irritating details, I am throwing the towel. This is not for me.

PS. I received an ARC from Netgalley in exchange for a honest review. Sorry, it had to be negative