Alex Rivers (1)

I was willing to just roll with the immigrant propaganda at first but it got absurd by the second book. She just wouldn't stop spewing this one-dimensional idea. This would've been more bearable without the current political context in Europe but it's written in a way that leaves no doubt that this is exactly what it is. No one would have a clue what she was talking about without that context. I really hate it when not even fiction can refrain from forcing political opinions onto me. I am sick and tired of it especially because there is not the slightest nuance or any kind of differentiated take on the issue. Fear is driving the entire population of London to wrongfully blame every single bad event on immigrants. Be it a serial killing or a flood of the Temse. Immigrants are clearly responsible. Because that is clearly how the majority of people think. It's collective insanity and it's completely unnecessary for the plot. The entire immigrant bullshit could've been left out without changing a single other thing about the book. Oh, and if you want to explain "subtle" with a polar opposite, this would be a perfect example.

On a positive note, this is a rare example of well-done magic denial. I am usually among the first people that complain about the dense MC that keeps denying their own perception of supernatural stuff. But in this case, the author was able to build a convincing case of how denial in such a situation could realistically look. I could believe that this character could act this way without being in any way stupid so it didn't annoy me even tho it took quite a while.

The author has the unfortunate tendency to repeat stuff in a rambling manner. It's not that she doesn't trust the reader to remember and thinks she has to constantly add reminders. It's more that she basically uses the same ideas repeatedly sometimes even three times back to back. Or sometimes it appears like characters are stuck in some kind of thought spiral. I think what's happened here is that she had an idea for a good segment, writes it, but then the idea kind of gets stuck in her mind for a while so she ends up writing multiple very similar scene slices. I believe a good editor should've addressed this. This is a great example of what differentiates a mediocre editor from a good one. This issue is much more pronounced in the second book.

The MC doesn't give everyone lip to appear tough but instead frequently just smiles and nods to gracefully avoid conflicts which make her appear more mature while taking away nothing from her tough and competent demeanour. I am not aversed to a bit of sass but the typical uf fmc that always goes for confrontation come hell or high water is getting tiresome. I immediately liked the MC because of this. It's a shame that this character trait moves more and more into the background over time.

This leads me to a more general problem the series suffers from which is the loss of identity. It kind of forgets where it even wants to go. In the beginning, the MC had a distinct personality but the longer I read the fuzzier her identity becomes. The only thing that is really preserved is her childhood trauma. Everything else just adjusts for whatever the plot needs next. The plot feels like sprinting on a treadmill. You have to keep going on full power just to stay still. There isn't anything there beyond the current emergency. While the MC takes an active role within the current emergencies she appears entirely passive beyond the next goal. There are some not very subtle but still vague hints that it's all connected but it's all spelled out from the start and the MC doesn't really seem to care about the whole thing anyway. So why should I?

The author tends to endlessly drag out tense and climactic situations. You can not drag a tense sene out indefinitely regardless of how many times you raise the stakes or move the goal post. It drains the reader's attention and If you don't get to the point with all that tension the reader will eventually just tire out and will stop caring. This was the final straw that made me I drop the second book. It just kept going, trying to retain tension by repeating itself more and more. It feels a bit like bad impromptu storytelling like: "This is really tense you see because a and b but then happened c which is also exciting but there is b which is pretty tense as well as a and after b, c happened which was really something" and so on and so forth. This only gets particularly bad in the second book but after noticing it there I retroactively realized that this is something the first book suffered from as well.

All in all, I enjoyed the first book. The last 20% lead me to adjust from 4 to 3 stars though.
Sadly, the author wasn't able to keep up that level of quality in the second book.… (más)