Content Warnings for book: Noncon, dubcon, violence

Kink: Public sex 

The rambling below will make it seem like I disliked this book. It’s not that, honestly. I just have to get this out though.

I’ll be real. Every time I take a crack at Feener’s sci-fi world I’m lost as hell. I don’t think it’s because I’m stupid - it’s convoluted, throws a wild amount of elements together that doesn’t work well together, and the exposition dumping is a nightmare. Multiple planets and monarchies, worlds that have modern day mafia for whatever reason, but also special powers but don’t worry aliens look exactly human, cyberpunk-esque tech ???

I don’t know if all those things should work together, but even if they should, surely you can think deeply about these world building decisions and make it make some sense besides just throwing a world bible at someone and hoping they’ll figure it out. Will I eventually find the answers in her books? Is that the secret to keep people reading? Maybe. Clearly it’s working because I’ve got plans to try and go back into the ringer to figure out WTF is happening. 

Also… “questions and commands”. Come on now. We can call it truth or dare, I promise we will get it as an audience.

Anyway… 

Malone’s novella is set in said world, hence the relevance. I could tell Malone wanted to dump the information ASAP to get to the actual plot because it came in big paragraphs in the beginning. Some which weren’t properly formatted, which is a shame. There’s some inconsistencies as well, like how a taser turned into a gun and then back into a taser in the span of a few paragraphs. 

I want to like the writing, however the POV was an issue for me. It went from a dual POV then head hopping very quickly, with poor indicators of when this change was happening — as is the nature of head hopping. It was honestly a little discombobulating. Because it was just blips of Davian’s POV on occasion before going back to Camren?

As for the characters… 

They were pretty enjoyable, though I think the decisions the MCs made on both sides are pretty immature, lmao. They’re college kids though, so it’s really not a surprise. Davian and Camren both are awful people in the end — Camren violently and truly, while Davian was pathetically doing bad things for his own selfish needs. Alls well that ends well, I suppose.