#azer

like yesterday, one of my classmated who recently started reading powerless stepped inside the class. no hi, no how are you. just "I AM GOING TO KILL THAT IMPERIAL I HATE HIM WHY'D HE HAVE TO COME THEN AEHSUDJBSWGFASJB"

Boy do I have some thoughts

Okay all in all i loved the characters. Kai and paedyn are my babies and they deserve the world I will keep them safe in my pocket

I wanted to give this book 5 stars, I really did but there were too many issues that I couldn't ignore

1. The spelling/grammer/sentence mistakes

Why were there so many damn mistakes??? This felt like the first draft of the book. Does the author not have editors or beta readers???

Excerpts below: (highlighted by the aggressive use of pooja)

2. It felt like Lauren Roberts read every famous booktok book and mashed them into one

Now there's nothing wrong with taking inspiration from other books but it felt like she took the fan favourites scenes or basic concepts from another book and put them into her book to appeal to the booktok audience. And it worked.

There wasn't much original content in this book and I would have loved to see some things expanded on but it seemed to have been dumbed down to work for booktok

Excerpts below:

3. Way too much telling and less showing

Adena was only mentioned per convenience and there weren't any scenes expect in the beginning of the book where they actually showed the relationship between adena and pae and how much they care for each other. A few more pages with them would have made Adena's death feel more significant but it just felt like she was a means to end and was used as a scapegoat to deliver an emotional blow to the readers.

Another thing that I felt like was just told but not shown was the relationship of the brothers and jax. To show emphasis on their brotherly bonding, they just had kai constantly ruffling jax's hair. It would have been so great if she had given a little back story of the brothers with jax like lauren did for kitt and kai often

Also half the time I couldn't even tell what position the characters were in because of the lack of description given when they changed position. I did not understand how Kai and Pae were sitting under the willow tree when they were thumb fighting. Where is what limb??

4. So many loose ends and for what

Some things that looked like would be important later were just brushed aside after being mentioned once or twice and it really did leave me wondering throughout the book. Other scenes were just skipped over or rushed through to get to the interesting parts leaving me confused as to how and what happened.

A scene of Kai or kitt reflecting on paedyn's back scars because of stealing as a kid would have been so perfect. I really thought we would get a scene like that, especially since it was mentioned with such emphasis, but the scars on her back were never mentioned when she was in the palace and around the brothers. Literally not even once

Also how did paedyn get from the palace to her old house when she was looking for the resistance?? Did she not need a horse? Because kitt and her needed a horse to make it to Loot and Loot wasn't too far from her house. So did she walk?? How did she make it back with Lenny?? That scene was so rushed

What I did love:

I still love the book though. The fights scenes had me holding my breath. Lauren Roberts really does have a talent for helping you visualise those. Especially the scene where jax almost died, I didn't breathe at all until he was okay.

And the development of the relationship between and Kai and pae was so sweet it didn't feel forced and I loved seeing their thoughts change throughout the book.

This book started off so strong, with promising nuance and world-building, but it seems to have lost that momentum until the end.

Commissions Open!!