I must’ve really liked Emika Chen at some point-but I can no longer accurately place her in my head. Eventually, the boredom quickly swallowed my enthusiasm so that what was left simply felt like utter indifference. It takes a long time for the plot to really kick in, trusting on the reader to be invested enough in the possibilities of the story to make it there. Unfortunately, there isn’t really an infinite store of patience to be had, and every page lasts for what is likely only a minute but seems to drag across several years.

But the biggest problem with the story was the pacing. The concept and execution in this book are so divorced as to bear no relation to one another. The utter wrongness of it, the way it won’t fit in my head, keeps coming back to me again and again, as if I’ve only just read it. Honestly, there has to be some fundamental law of the universe against sequels that don’t live up to their prequels, and if there isn't, I want it written somewhere that I am conscientiously objecting. I loved Warcross, and it floored me to read this book and experience such a sudden shift-I feel as though a script had been shuffled and I’d been handed the wrong pages. It’s just…the kind of book you read, and it fills you with the wrong things: you use a lot of energy to get through each chapter, and in the end, you feel emptier than ever before. Finishing this book was a personal achievement but you can’t really brag about that at dinner parties.

Wildcard book marie lu