2.5 stars

I received a free digital copy of this book from the publishers/author via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Bear with me here as this review is probably going to be a long one as there were some things I loved with this book, but also a lot of things that irritated me.

This is basically a female space pirate adventure, with a team of four cool ladies. Their leader is Androma aka The Bloody Baroness who turned into a fearsome, bloodthirsty pirate while she ran away from a heartbreaking past. She gets a chance for a clean slate when she’s tasked with rescuing the General’s kidnapped son, but she must also team up with her ex-boyfriend for the mission. And stuff goes down…

First off, the good things. I liked the world in general - I thought there seemed to be a lot of thought about the space system, from the different planets and their people and cultures, to the war that went on and the peace between certain planets and how one was ousted.

I liked Dex. He was probably one of my favourite characters even though he was basically Flynn Rider from Tangled. Like I was generally waiting for him to do ‘the smoulder’ at one point.

I think I also like Adhira the most out of the planets, and Lira’s aunt as a character even though she wasn’t even in it that much. The species were extremely similar to one from Becky Chamber’s Wayfarer trilogy (the scales flashing emotions for instance) but I let that one slide.

Okay here’s some of my gripes (and probably some spoilers in here too so if you don’t wanna know, don’t read on).

There were so many POV’s! I actually didn’t really think we needed Dex’s POV until maybe the end when he was trying to save everyone. Lira’s one as well, probably wasn’t really needed. She also felt a little bit like cardboard most of the time to be honest. Klaren’s past POV was just weird and seemed really out of place for the majority of the book (also I mixed her up with Kalee at the beginning and was confused for a while).

And many of these characters and plots have been done before. Like I said Dex reminded me of Tangled’s Flynn Rider in many ways with his charm, Androma is basically Celaena Sardothien from Throne of Glass (more on her in a bit, I’ve a lot of say about Andi) and Nor was literally Queen Levana from the Lunar Chronicles. Also the whole thing about Zenith was what happened in Divergent.

Okay I’m going to talk about Andi now and how much I’m SICK of being given these characters that are oh so bad, but oh wait they’re really not. I’ve talked before about my feelings on Celaena and how much of an assassin she’s really not and Andi is really the same. She goes on and on and on, (like really, she never lets you forget about it) about how her soul is black, and she has no heart and she’s the ‘Bloody Baroness’ (really hate that name too, it makes her sound like an old woman), but then she’s haunted by the people she kills and remembers them and feels remorse. ALSO, there’s really no need for her to kill as many people as she does. If she’s as good as she says she is, she could definitely knock people out instead of killing them all the time - like did she really need to decapitate three soldiers’ heads that were in the way of her and Dex in the beginning? I think not.

Also, Andi and Dex just not doing anything with their relationship at the end was weird, and didn’t make any sense with what had gone on with them for pretty much the entire story. ALSO, Andi never really forgave Dex for ya know, turning her in so his dad wouldn’t die? I mean, I’d be okay with that reasoning on his part soooo she should probably forgive him.

Also everything about Kalee and the plane crash was just a HUGE overreaction if you ask me. Everyone going on about how Andi was some murderer when it was a plane crash that she obviously didn’t mean to cause. I think people need to look up the definition of murder and realise it’s ya know, killing with intent? I just got mad every time the Genral or Valen called Andi a murderer when she hadn’t murdered Kalee.

I was disappointed in Breck and Gilly as well. I feel like there was so much more that could have been done with them, and their back story but they ended up just being used as comic relief the entire time, and seemed like caricatures or something. I also think the entire crew really was being used as a fawning audience for Andi the entire novel which I didn’t think she deserved as at times she was a terrible captain.

And this book is so long. SO much longer than it needs to be I feel like at least 100 pages could have been cut. There were some scenes that were completely unnecessary (for example, that whole chapter in Adhira where the girls are wrestling/play-fighting for no reason?). I was stuck at 70% for almost three days, and that’s unheard of for me. I was so glad when this was over as it just seemed to take forever.