Tiger is one of the few reviled Dechet, super soldiers
created by humanity to fight the shifters - before the shifters dropped the
bombs anyway – left in the world. She lives alone, literally with the ghosts of
her fellows.
But missing children, children being experimented on by
dark forces possibly from beyond the world destroying rifts, is something Tiger
cannot ignore. Her gifts and training will be essential to Jonas and his allies
if he wants to get these children back.
Of course, the ancestral hatred between their people is
something else they’ll have to over come
I reviewed the
first book in this series very favourably and a lot of the stuff that
happened there remained awesome in this book as well. The world building – with
the war between the shifters and humanity, the creation of the dechet,
artificial fighting beings as weapons for humanity are all still there and
excellent. The idea of vampires as a vicious, terrible threat constantly
lurking outside the light is a wonderful change from a genre so replete with
super sexy angsty vampires. On top of that we have the wonderful addition of
the rifts and the new threats lurking against shifter, human and dechet alike.
This leads to the current wonderful conflict with Tiger,
our protagonist, a dechet having to leave the comfort of her isolation in the
last book to chase her demons and save some children. And we have the ghosts,
which are also awesome.
These are all excellent things that were in the last book
and they continue to be excellent in this book.
But they continue, they don’t really progress. We don’t
really know more about the world than we already have. We know the big bad guys
plan, kind, but I’m not sure of their motivations yet. Or at all. We get hints
here and there – of the hybrid creatures from the rifts who have different
motives (whatever they are). We have some hints of others joining in because of
bitterness over the war… but barring as few immortal beings this war has been
over for 100 years; I need some more development to see why so many people are
In this book we have a lot of things happening but it all
feels a little… disjointed. Partly it’s because of the way the motivations are presented:
everyone cares about the missing kids. And I get it, kids are missing and being
tortured and experimented on this is terrible – but so is the actual plan to
destroy the entire planet which seems to be way down everyone’s priority list.
When what Tiger does actually derails or damages other plans – like her
infiltration of the big bad company it’s all about the kids, occasionally thwarting
other plans in the process, but only as a tangent. It feels odd that we have
this major apocalyptic thing that everyone’s kind of brushing over for the very
noble cause if these kids.
This also kind of makes the story disjointed – especially
when we get random events like Tiger randomly meeting a bigwig and trying to
seduce him randomly on the off chance he knew someone and then she keeps
pursuing this very long relationship with him which eats lots of time and I’m
not sure what it achieves. Or there’s the infiltrating to the upper levels
which makes a lot of sense if they’re trying to shut down the country but
instead it’s just another stepping stone. I mean they do damage the company but
it feels almost tangential.
It wouldn’t take much to just actually have made all this
fit – just more clearly explain what they actually intend to achieve with each
step, actually showing them achieve that and actually have them focus on more
than the kids.
I also wish we’d continued the theme of Tiger being sick
of how the group was treating her. I can understand her working with them because
she’s practical and they have the same goal – but some more resistance, some
more commentary on her trust, her refusal to tolerate any more threats from
them – would have been nice.
Again, there’s a whole lot about this book I love – the world
building, the main character Tiger: her conflict, her background, how that has
shaped and coloured her and her motivations. The writing is well paced and
strikes a nice balance between exposition and keeping the story moving, but the
story itself needs more focus and foundation. I liked this book because it was
very like the old book and I loved that – but I would have liked it to have
built more on that old book
I also would have liked some more diversity – we have one
almost definite POC, but she’s a nameless antagonist. And a shapeshifter (as in
she shifts her human appearance) so I don’t even know what she looks like. Is
Jonas, the love interest, a POC? I don’t know – but in one brief scene after
being mangled he’s described as a “brown” lump on the road… which is kind of
stretching the diversity front here.
