Of all the books in the GODS AND MORTALS collection, I thought I'd passed the worst one. Not true. This was actually kind of painful to read. I very nearly skipped the whole thing. The characters were annoying idiots. Even the side characters did made me roll my eyes. "Oh, there's a colossal threat that could eradicate us all, but one person rookie survived so clearly we need to sit on our asses and let her save us all when she clearly has no idea what she's doing? Genius! Why didn't I think of that?" Give me a break. The dialogue was cringe-inducing. NOBODY TALKS LIKE THAT. Sorry, you didn't appreciate the caps lock? Me neither. There are block capitals everywhere, often mixed with italicized sentences. If you thought that was annoying, just wait until you check out all the ellipses. EVERYWHERE... ALL... THE... TIME... I kind of felt like I was reading something from a circus, complete with talking monkeys and birds. Yeah. I know. I wouldn't have minded the monkeys, if every encounter with them didn't have a second where they scratched their ass. Way to make my sympathize with them. Oh, and speaking of sympathizing, it's never smart to refer to a child as an "it" when he's clearly a "boy," and if he's half human, you don't get to name him. God, this book was awful. The more I think about it, the more I dislike it. The only reason I rated it at all was because I was interested in the concept of the world, and not even that was given the credit it deserved. Skip this one.