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A review by victoriabooklover
The Second Rebel by Linden A. Lewis
4.0
The Second Rebel left me with a shit ton of emotions…some good and some bad.
It’s typically hard for me to move on from the premise of the first book when it comes to series that have a VERY specific element that drew me in. The First Sister focused heavily on The First Sister and the Sisterhood, which was so compelling and unique that I flew right through it. Not to mention all the plot-twist and developments we see throughout the first book. All of it really set the scene for a book that was extremely compelling and unique.
It’s what comes after that’s always tricky; a sequel either reals me in further or pushes me away. With The Second Rebel it did a bit of both. While I missed these characters and I wanted to see what shenanigans they were tangled in, I felt like the world suddenly became so large that I was no longer attracted to what transpired. It was less about The First Sister, Lito, and Hiro, but more about the world around them. Aka world-building. For me it was almost too much as the first book was so much more character driven and less about the sci-fi world they lived in. I say this but it feels bittersweet because the world-building is absolutely necessary especially for the later half of the novel. I won’t say this is a problem on Linden’s side but on mine for not being able to initially respect how they wanted to craft the world to set up what would essentially be a war. Plus in the later half of the book, I began to appreciate the world a lot more with how it interacted with the plot.
Another thing that initially turned me off was the introduction of Luce. She gave me major Ephraim from Iron Gold vibes in terms of how I felt about her. She was introduced and we were given this whole story about what she was currently going through and I didn’t care. Not one bit. Not until all of a sudden there was a shift and her character became so intriguing. It was so odd, but suddenly her life at Val the Akira labs became interesting and I just wanted more of her chapters! I think that’s the issue with this book, a lot of things took time for me to appreciate.
The rest of the cast was great, I think of all the POV’s I least cared about Lito….but of course I felt bad saying that by the end of the book
It’s typically hard for me to move on from the premise of the first book when it comes to series that have a VERY specific element that drew me in. The First Sister focused heavily on The First Sister and the Sisterhood, which was so compelling and unique that I flew right through it. Not to mention all the plot-twist and developments we see throughout the first book. All of it really set the scene for a book that was extremely compelling and unique.
It’s what comes after that’s always tricky; a sequel either reals me in further or pushes me away. With The Second Rebel it did a bit of both. While I missed these characters and I wanted to see what shenanigans they were tangled in, I felt like the world suddenly became so large that I was no longer attracted to what transpired. It was less about The First Sister, Lito, and Hiro, but more about the world around them. Aka world-building. For me it was almost too much as the first book was so much more character driven and less about the sci-fi world they lived in. I say this but it feels bittersweet because the world-building is absolutely necessary especially for the later half of the novel. I won’t say this is a problem on Linden’s side but on mine for not being able to initially respect how they wanted to craft the world to set up what would essentially be a war. Plus in the later half of the book, I began to appreciate the world a lot more with how it interacted with the plot.
Another thing that initially turned me off was the introduction of Luce. She gave me major Ephraim from Iron Gold vibes in terms of how I felt about her. She was introduced and we were given this whole story about what she was currently going through and I didn’t care. Not one bit. Not until all of a sudden there was a shift and her character became so intriguing. It was so odd, but suddenly her life at Val the Akira labs became interesting and I just wanted more of her chapters! I think that’s the issue with this book, a lot of things took time for me to appreciate.
The rest of the cast was great, I think of all the POV’s I least cared about Lito….but of course I felt bad saying that by the end of the book