T.A. White

I rate this a 3.5 rounded up to a 4. Read this if you like Mulan. This book is post-apocalyptic Mulan up until 70% of the way until it decides it wants to be a beauty and the beast romance, and it seemingly does this very grudgingly. This story is really about someone who is ostracized by her people and gains a found family because she is skilled and loyal, thus making the romance feel a bit tacked on and unnecessary. I found the main character to be very relatable. I'm not sure if as much as I liked this book it is enough to read the rest of this series, though. I low-key don't care for siding with the conquerors, and I get the feeling the author kind of wrote herself into a corner with that one because there is no scenario where Fallon is morally in the right, or the conquerors are more sympathetic than the conquered. The two main characters even have a "we'll agree to agree to disagree," position on this thus leaving it open-ended, and you can't really do beauty and the beast without the beast being misunderstood. I think this book would have been better paced if the romance was left for the second book. This book didn't need it.… (mer)

This one suckered me in with a few tropes I very much enjoy.
Emotionally withdrawn MC because of a tortured past with a lot of strength, physically as well as in willpower. Hidden gifts, a mysterious legacy. You probably already recognize the type.
Another thing this book does which I enjoy a lot is characters not giving every detail of their thoughts away in conversations. People actually being able to school their expressions and hide their emotions.
Imo this makes for much more interesting confrontations and verbal sparring.

But even tho a lot of my favorite elements are there the execution is just abysmal.
The dialogue, as well as the action scenes, are fine but the reasoning behind any and all decisions is completely bonkers. No reason, no common sense.
There is nothing pushing the mc along the plot apart from the author putting faulty and illogical thoughts and reasoning in the heads of her characters at every turn. It's really frustrating.
Especially the mc acts totally out of character every time it's necessary for the plot even in cases where lots of other much better solutions are obviously available.
I even like where the plot is going! But I just can not reconcile with the absurd reasoning that is supposed to explain it.

There is no salvation in the sci-fi part either. It's all actually just soft magic but the author calls it sci-fi for some reason.

The world is not much better either. All these highly advanced aliens collectively act like bigoted backwater numbskulls. But it's their "culture" so it's fine.

I am really disappointed by this one.… (mer)

On one hand, I very much enjoyed the kickass heroine who wouldn't let herself be pushed around.
On the other hand, it got incredibly frustrating that, regardless of how well she held her ground, events ended up pushing her around eventually anyway.

The book suffers from a weird disconnect between how serious it takes itself. For example, at one point her family's lives are being threatened by someone and this threat is taken as life or death serious but later on, she starts just flippantly disregarding this threat without apparent fear of consequences even though nothing about the situation has changed.
This inconsistency in seriousness is a general problem that appears multiple times.
If the MC doesn't take indentured servitude over 50 years seriously why should I?

I will give the second book a chance to elaborate more on world-building especially around the supernatural world but I am skeptical this series and I will have a future together.

Edit: I've read the second book and I am incredibly disappointed.
It has already been a problem in the first book that literally everyone is an asshole to the MC for no reason but at least we didn't know those people so they might have good reasons for their behavior we just don't know about yet.
Sadly none of the benefit of the doubt I gave turned out to be justified. Everyone just continues to fuck with the MC in the worst way and while the author comes close to actually pointing this out multiple times, she never quite goes there.
While I have been annoyed by the "everyone is an asshole" trope itself, it is by far not the worst part.
I mentioned the heroine being kickass at the top. Forget that. She is not. She is a limb spineless punching back that just takes it. Every time another injustice or betrayal is dumped on her she vocally complains about it for a few paragraphs but she always just ends up taking it, worse, she forgives it and doesn't change her treatment of the offenders. She acts like all those betrayals never happened. She already started out as someone with strong morals and a drive to help everyone but in the second book, it becomes obvious that this trait escalates beyond any reasonable level. It goes as far as her just forgetting about literal torture and just letting the sadistic bastard run free.

I have somewhat of a Deja Vu feeling about this criticism. I think I have had a very similar complaint about other series by this author but I am not entirely sure.

Something else that became apparent in the second book is how cheaply the author tries to pull off plot twists out of the blue, not caring that she directly contradicts major plot points from within the same book to get there.

The first book is probably by far the best in this series as it is clear that the author took very little care with the sequels.… (mer)