Just Okay

On the one hand, I feel like I really enjoyed this book, but on the other, I wonder if I would have liked this book as much if I hadn’t just read the entire Beyond series plus the Gideon’s Riders series before getting to this series. Those were all re-reads, but now the stories are fresh in my mind as I was reading this

I love a series where I’m in it for the long game. It took the Beyond series 9 novel sized books (not including the novellas in-between) to take down the powers that be in Eden. But it’ll (maybe) take 3 books to take down the corporations that lives up on the Hill of Atlanta in this series? I feel like the authors have said there were plans for more books with these characters since there ARE a few teases here for some more characters getting paired up, so I just wonder WHERE we’re going to end up at the end of book 3. Will anything be resolved yet? I guess I'm going to find out.

Because as much as I love Maya and Gray in this book, I wouldn’t say the external plot in this is moving very fast. There’s a slow(ish) burn romance going on, but the overarching plot doesn’t feel as pressing as, say, book 8 in the Beyond series as if we’re supposed to be in the penultimate book and the next book, stuff has to go down. So I do see where some of the reviews are coming from when they say…nothing happens in this book. I mean, things DO happen, but slowly and a lot of the “action” scenes is are situated at the beginning and at the end.

Content notes include violence, death, kidnapping, torture, threat of impending death/health complications, human trafficking, and adults manipulating the lives of children.

I want to say this book takes place a month after the events in book 1, but I could be wrong about that because "a few months" is mentioned multiple times and so I’m just kind of confused about that whole timeline. I listened to this book on audiobook so I think I just missed the clarification. The book starts off with Maya and Conall working surveillance in a van while Nina, Knox, Dani, and Rafe are breaking into a facility to retrieve a package for a client. It’s a mission that takes a turn when the crew uncovers a human trafficking ring.

There’s a whole plot here where the team is trying to find other children who might be kidnapped and trying to find the people behind the trafficking ring. But Maya, unlike Nina and Dani, was not trained to be a soldier since she was a child. She remembers things. She remembers everything anyone has ever said, and anything anyone has ever done. She was a Data Courier for an executive VP lady called Birgitte Skovgaard. It was Maya’s job to remember things considered too sensitive to be written down. Maya is intelligent and her brain is unmatched, but physically on a team of supersoldiers? She needs to be trained harder than the rest of them in how to fight in combat.

And that’s where Gray comes in. Gray is part of the Silver Devils squad and was trained by the Protectorate because he had nowhere else to go. He’s someone who is very good at guns, and is especially good as his job as a sniper.

I have to be honest, Gray did not really make an impression on me in the first book. Like, he had his moment with Maya during one scene, but that was it. He’s just a very quiet character, and he’s just NICE. He’s not the leader like Knox, he’s not the friendly computer genius Conall, and he’s not as extroverted as Rafe. So, out of all the guys, it feels like he’s overshadowed by everyone else's presence. Even here in this book, I feel like I LIKE him, and I can see how he’s perfect for Maya, but for an entire book about Maya and Gray? Well.

Their book just feels super toned down. An opposite of Nina and Knox, if you will. You have the entire crew basically take off to do a mission at one point and Maya and Gray are left alone. Maya is just scanning documents and helping out people who need help in their little neighborhood, and Gray is resting. The only thing that kind of heightens the risk of impending doom in this book is that the implants the Protectorate soldiers all have that makes them into super soldiers? Gray’s body is starting to reject the implant and he’s dying.

It’s only because I am familiar with Kit Rocha’s works that I was not entirely angsting whether or not he lived or died. I fully believed the characters would figure out a way to save him in the end and Maya and Gray would get their HFN. Even the possibility of him dying didn’t really hook its claws into my brain. I have been known not to handle books well when that sense of dread just really overtakes a story. But I did wonder HOW he was going to survive and it’s interesting to see where the story went with that.

At the end of the last book, we find out that a character we assumed was dead throughout book one turns out NOT to be dead. But I almost forgot about Mace for a minute even though I literally read these books back-to-back, because he doesn’t show up immediately in this book. It takes awhile. So, if you're expecting him to turn up on the first page, you've got to wait. It was interesting to see what kind of person he would turn out to be after the horrors he’s been subjected to, but what’s more interesting is WHO he’s supposed to end up with. I am interested, I am invested, and I NEED THEIR BOOK NOW. I don’t want to spoil too much, but it’s super obvious once you read this book.

Conall also gets shipped up in this book? The moment he describes Max, like before we even get a name for the man, I was like OH HE’S THE ONE. And honestly, by the description of Max, it sounds like he would run more with the O’Kanes than anything else. I’m super intrigued by the man and I want to know his entire backstory because he is currently an enigma.

I really just have one major bone to pick with this story. Everyone goes through all that work to help the Silver Devils fake their deaths in the end of book 1 so that the Protectorate doesn’t keep looking for Knox, Gray, Conall, and Rafe, and you’re telling me they just tell EVERYONE their names still and don’t try to hide their identity at all? I get that everyone from their past lives refer to each other with their code designations, but it’s not like their actual names were a secret they never told anyone else? Maya changed her name after Nina helped fake her death, so why didn’t anyone else consider having a different identity? That is the main thing that bugged me about this story.

And I guess the other thing I’d mention is that Luna is barely in this story at all. She was kidnapped in the first book and all Knox and his team talked about in that book was how vital she was to keeping them all alive when their implants needed maintenance. But she all but disappeared in this book. Why is she suddenly such a nonentity? She still randomly shows up, but I swear we see and interact more with her aunt than with her. I thought she’d be a character that would get her own book at some point, but maybe not. Where did she go?

I want to say Gray is a white character (that's a confusing sentence but you all know what I mean), but it is mentioned more casually that Maya is Black. The book cover reflects this. This series takes place in a post-apocalyptic world so I do give more grace to how the characters are written. I will say it's better than the Beyond series, where everything felt much more vague in those books until we got the cover redesigns and saw what the authors meant for the female characters to look like.

The only thing about reading all of these books back-to-back is that I think I liked the story more when everything with the timeline and places felt super vague. Now we have dates and specifics in the series and I don’t think I’m a big fan of that. I liked the vagueness of when the world went to a handbasket with the Flares, and now we have so many dates in the memos and events that have happened? I don’t like it. But maybe I’m the only one who doesn’t like all that and people love their details. I don’t know. I got used to the vagueness of the Beyond series and how anything could happen anytime in the future, and now we're suddenly in the 2080s.

We do learn that O’Kane liquor has somehow made its way to Atlanta. How has Dallas expanded operations into the East Coast? He is a man with his eye on expanding his business so I shouldn’t be surprised. I would LOVE to see the O'Kanes and the Atlanta crew to meet up somehow and some point even though they're on opposite sides of the United States.

So. The audiobook narration. This is where I have major problems.

I think we have found the word Lidia Dornet, the audiobook narrator, struggles with the most. It’s the word “kudzu”. It’s a devil of a plant that grows everywhere and it’s near impossible to get rid of, and it’s a very well known nuisance in southern states. The narrator gets the pronunciation right the first time it’s mentioned? The pronunciation gets a little weird the second time like she couldn’t remember how to say it correctly, and then she fully gave up the rest of the time the word came up and reverted back to how she was saying it in the first book. I just don’t understand.

The narrator sounds super peppy in this book when she’s voicing Maya, like almost giving Maya an air of innocence with the way she sounds. It’s not bad. But she’s not consistent with the voices she gives all the characters, and it’s SO hard to figure out who’s talking sometimes because there’s no indication who’s who from the voices she gives her characters. I’m sure it’s more obvious in the text when characters are speaking back and forth and it’s easier to follow along with context clues, but I’m having a heck of a time with following along in audio.

The narrator also randomly gives characters southern accents. It’s NEVER consistent so you never know who’s suddenly going to have an accent and when they’re not. I didn’t have an issue with any other Kit Rocha audiobook narrators (Lucy Malone, Rebecca Estrella, and Tatiana Sokolov for the Beyond series and Gideon's Riders series), but I just don’t think Lidia Dornet can handle a large cast of characters in an audiobook. She’s a good enough narrator, but she is NOT a large cast narrator, you know? She does not have her hands wrapped around who's who and what each character should sound like throughout the books.

There’s also a lot of parts in this audiobook where it’s obvious things got added in during post? Because the audio quality is very different from the surrounding text and you can tell sentences got randomly edited and dropped in. It’s not the worst thing, but it is very, very obvious.

For the story, I do like that we see Maya grow as a character and really learn to embrace her skills and treat the knowledge in her brain not as a hindrance, but something she can use. I liked her dynamic with Gray and I thought their training sessions together were fun. I like a new character we meet in this book, a child who decides to call herself Rainbow. We also see how Ava (Nina's clone sister and kind of villain from book 1) tries to apologize in the most Ava way possible (which is by smothering everyone with gifts and presents). I thought the diary entries in-between chapters was much easier to follow in this book over the report style format in the first book. I liked how this series still keeps to the classic Kit Rocha style where we mainly still have POV chapters (in third-person) told from Maya and Gray’s perspectives, but we also see chapters from other characters' perspectives as well.

Overall, I feel like I liked the book well enough, but Maya and Gray’s dynamic were just very lowkey in comparison to Nina and Knox. I feel like there was even more happening between Maricela and Ivan in book 3 of the Gideon’s Riders series than what we see here. I appreciate Maya and Gray but I’m ready for hot, burning sexual tension and the danger that is Dani and Rafe in the next book, so I’m going to jump right into that one.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

Not their best, but well worth a credit

The story was engaging, and the worldbuilding provided a believable backdrop for the unfolding events. Maya's internal development was center stage, so understandably it was the most carefully crafted. Unfortunately, the experiences and motivations of some secondary characters (notably one unexpectedly part of the team,) remained somewhat murky. Overall, given the number of characters involved, the authors do a good job of keeping them distinct and interesting. I do wish they'd sprinkle in a little of the 'Beyond' stories' heat. ;-)
Nitpicking - the narration was fumbled several times with mispronunciations or the substitution of similar sounding words with very different meanings. It didn't happen often, but I get yanked right out of the story when it does. Overall, an easy 4 out of 5.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

1 person found this helpful

Awww, the gooey middle

“Now you’re just asking to get forked!”
Because this middle book features Maya, who is so sensitive to simulation that she avoids touch, and Gray, who’s implant is winding down to self destruction, the romance is a slow, gentle tear jerker.
But that’s okay. Sometimes between friskier, fight-ier romance, what I need is a sweet palate cleanser. It’s halfway thru to get to the first kiss and there’s only one sex scene, so if you’re here just for the nooky, then this is not the series for you.

“Got to find the perfect fork!”
The narrator is still a close talker, such that you hear her breathing and gulping to distraction.
She settled in for me. Especially with the speed up, her voicing worked for me better than in book 1.

“My turn!”
Oh, I got River Tam in Firefly / Serenity vibes with Maya’s gifts and the evil scientist plots.

Of the three series, I liked this series best for the ratio of dystopian story to romance to sex. The Beyond Series was hot in a kinky, smut-pocalypse, bikers-N-booze way, but the sector uprising against Eden arc was dropped down in meager breadcrumbs across a nine book series that was clearly all about the sex. The Gideon’s Rider series was a weird mashup of regency romance in a post-apocalypse setting; the focus on MCs living in luxury, throwing balls, and ruling as gods/kings clashed horribly with the idea of them good guys, especially given the description of this world in the two other series. This series, with far tamer sex and much more focus on rising up against the Corporation, hits my Goldilocks zone for pulpy post-apocalypse romance.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

2 people found this helpful

Terrible follow up novel

Absolutely nothing happens in the first half of the book, except for the opening scene. Then it’s just a waste of time. Literally half the book can be summed up with the protagonist wondering if she should like this guy and what if he doesn’t like her. But then again what if he does? Oh he does but should she do anything about it? Seriously it’s half the book.

The action gets interesting with about a 1/4 remaining. But the climax is such a let down. None of the great tension found in the first book was here. Very little action or suspense. Hard pass on the rest of the series.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

2 people found this helpful