disappointing entry for the series
I didn’t care for this book. It was boring. With all of the military and guerrilla warfare, you’d expect it to be the opposite. It was more of a bad action adventure book, and maybe because it focused so highly on the graphic displays of violence and not the story is what turned me off. Hearing how Gyada stuck her partially changed arm through an enemy and then sat there in shock after because of the violence. Not really surprising. It was all a bit too much and not enough at the same time.
Too much of the military-esque fighting with so many different groups, I couldn’t keep them straight. Maybe if you have an interest in Russian history, you can follow it, but without that knowledge, I couldn’t make sense of why one group was attacking the other sometimes. The not enough came from having a non-fulfilling story. There are bits and pieces all over but so much didn’t tie together for me. The author I think tried to give his characters reasonings for doing things, but most of their comments were surface only, no depth.
There were too many competing story lines as well. You can see how they are somewhat shaped together, but because none got enough development, they all fall flat. I think I would have preferred that this book just focused on the new AI (or Entity locked in a computer) and not have had all the fighting to contend with while they figured her out. Instead we only get bits and bobs about her and how she came to be. We find out CILO is a mad Kutherian but it would have been more interesting to hear the full story, not the tidbits that were shared. It almost just came across, this guy was a loon and he did horrible things, such as lock up the AI entity and how he practiced his enhancements on Gyada. But you don’t really get the full impact of just what all he did, could have done or the lasting repercussions.
I really liked the Boris character from the main series. Sadly these books aren’t doing him justice. He’s two-dimensional at best and an anachronistic throwback to an earlier time, with no substance. Gyada who had no interactions with the rest of humanity for decades if not centuries, and was from an even earlier time came across better as a character. That Gyada wasn’t a complete ‘bat-shit’ crazy, as they said CILO was is rather unbelievable. She could only communicate with the AI while being locked into her beast form. Even if it could somehow make it so Gyada doesn’t realize the passage of time, when she finally came out of the fugue she was in, seeing how changed the world had become should have been overwhelming and enough for her to lose it mentally.
The entire Sacred Clan concept is also a joke. In the main series, BA fought the Sacred Clan and utterly destroyed it’s compound and many of its people. So once these few escape, they immediately come after Boris and his group to get their tech by using this teleport feature of something they have. Of course, in the main series, you are led to believe that Stephanie Lee and the Clan we’re mostly destroyed and few remain. Where do all the fighters come from in this book then. That so many of them were also shapeshifters, seems unlikely, when in the main, barely anything is even known of this Were offshoot. Wolves and the rare Bear shifter is talked about, but Cats weren’t except when the Clan was finally brought in. They’ve had centuries to grow, develop and give birth to their own race of Weres. If they were so large of a group, wouldn’t the wolves, Nathan and the various packs already know of them to a larger degree.
It seemed more that the author needed a bad guy villain group and this was the easier way to create one. Though not a realistic one.
I’ll probably read the fourth book, but only because I tend to read entire series if they exist, once I’ve started one. Even if after the initial enjoyment of the first book or two fades and I’m left with blah with the remaining series. This book definitely rates in the blah-zone.