The protagonist over explains every thought and emotion, and I now prefer things that leave me space to infer. I do like the well developed opening with the MC motivated to leave home after the religion of her childhood has no ability to comfort her in the face of her grief after her mother joins the unconsecrated (becomes a zombie). However this just wasn’t fitting me overall.

I tried to get into this, but it just didn’t happen. I liked the first one, but something about this just didn’t work for me.

A big part of the issue is that I can’t form mental images of things I haven’t seen, and as the locations and action became more strange and more focused on technically-not-magic space power battles and pocket universe stuff it creates long stretches when the only thing I could focus on is Caiden’s thoughts about things. I didn’t really like Caiden in the last book, and I didn’t like him any better here.

Figured out pretty quickly this was too near-present for me. I’m also not looking for a YA love triangle plot right now.

The ableist language from THE SECRET HOUR has continued and actually doubled down. I understand that it's accurate to the early 2000's when this was written but it's consistent enough that it damaged my enjoyment of the story. The final straw was when part of the town's backstory involves Native Americans being characterized as having come in with the oil boom and ruined the secrecy the town had going. My dim recollection from reading this as a teen is that maybe this story is not accurate, but whether or not it turns out to be false in the narrative it was one thing too many and I'm not going to finish the book. This was a re-read to see if a series I loved as a teen held up now that I'm an adult, and for me, it didn't.

The book opens with a plot-relevant rape scene and I realized I can’t handle that right now.

I just couldn't get into this. I couldn't relate to the emotional tension for the main character because the system is clearly evil and it feels like she'll get to that conclusion eventually but not soon enough for me. It's fantasy with a pretty loosely described magic system and I prefer things more defined. 

I didn’t realize this was MG when I started it. I wish I’d had this as a kid but it’s too young for me now.

I don’t like the narrator and can tell the trajectory of the plot will stress me out.

THE LAST SUN was all wrong for me. I like witty banter and political machinations, but it felt like the interactions were constantly being explained. I made it halfway through and never felt like the protagonists were actually in any danger. There’s a tragic backstory that’s just hinted at so far, and a bodyguarding mission where they’ve just left their charge at home while they take care of other plot stuff. For all Rune talks about his lack of power, it hasn’t actually inconvenienced him or kept him from getting something done. When the seer told him to take a set of actions, he followed the advice and then everything was fine.

The tension doesn’t feel tense and I don’t like the characters enough to care whether they succeed. It’s a shame because I loved the initial problem that Mathias presents, I just wish the story was doing more with him.

It definitely doesn’t help that a bunch of the worldbuilding is themed around the Tarot, a topic with which I’m only passably familiar. If you’d like a fast-paced fantasy story with magic and guns in New Atlantis that’s themed around Tarot, give this a try. It’s just not my thing.

Just not a great fit for me.