Marie Lu really knows how to build a world, but I found these characters lacking — despite attempts to make them morally gray, the antagonists instead flip-flopped between evil and humanly flawed/redeemable, which was frustrating. (I genuinely forgot Taylor’s alleged ulterior motive/backstory at several points and thought she just wanted money/power.) Emika takes no initiative in the narrative, just sits around waiting for someone else to give her information and/or direction — then she calls in the Phoenix Riders and/or Jax to help — and doesn’t seem to have much personality besides. Her relationship with Hideo reaches soap-opera levels in this book (“I’ll take him out if I absolutely have to, for the good of the world ... but I know he can be saved”) and still falls flat, even during that scene. Zero’s entire storyline is predictable and overdramatic, which is disappointing because his situation is philosophically and technologically fascinating. And the ending was unsatisfying in that it was too neat, everything falling perfectly into place.

None of this is to say that this book is bad, it’s just aggressively mainstream.