Corinthya

A solid second book.

• The main antagonist is a bit of a surprise for this book but sufficiently credible that it made me want to punch the characters a few times.
• We get a second antagonist that didn't feel very threatening throughout the book and so the identity reveal also felt underwhelming, however the last ploy did feel a lot more high stakes. Also the explanation of the motive was a good one and came with some extra details I appreciated and that gave answers to other standing questions we had.
• The romance was deepened in this, we got to see more personality from the male lead than just the meeting focused one from the last book. Their relationship also got more depth and interaction.
• The same standout friendships from the last book.

Really good read that kept pulling me in and didn't feel like it dragged on forever.

An interesting take on a genre I'm not usually a fan of but it still worked.

• The pace feels like a mix of fast paced for somethings but much much slower for others. This felt a little off to me, especially since this is a planned trilogy of some significant length.
• The world is described as similar to ours, there are social differences (they are a lot more accepting) and technological ones, and even though the author made some efforts in explaining a bit of this I could tell this was not her forte. That was joined with some other attempts of scientific and other more scholarly subjects that were kind of a miss for me. Still it did not detract too much from my immersion into the story.

• Conflict wise, this didn't really present us with a main one exactly. We start with her situation being the problem and her memory staying an issue the whole book, but during the majority of it the relationships are the main thing. Not just the differences but the acceptance of new dynamics. This makes one character the main antagonist for this issue and I felt it had reason once we get some backstory to explain but since we don't have it right from the start it felt abrupt. After that was mostly solved we're just waiting for the foreshadowing to become the next big thing.

• When it comes to characters, they all felt distinctive but we do spend a lot more time with the FMC and only 2 of the MMC's. This looks like it will change in the next books, and it did help to build these relationships a lot so that was nice, I just found the others to also be interesting and wanted more time with them.
• Some of the dialog was weirdly written for me, like the changes in subject were sudden and didn't have pauses in between, that I felt were missing. This did take a bit to get used to even if it was for the faster pacing to work. Also some of the physics in intimate scenes were not fully making sense.

The ending was surprising and very much worked as a pull to keep reading the series. I'mma go and start the next one right away ;)

Very quick and sweet.

• This lacked a bit of depth for me, despite the initial premise being serious it didn't fully convince me. Didn't help that after that first conflict it just fizzled out and left a bit of an empty feeling.
• In the relationship we get a "lot" of yearning that feels very lust fueled and their actual relationship felt the same way for me. Not to mention their obsession with breeding being kinda the reason they get together.Because the male lead is actually sweet towards the girl I wouldn't consider this dark romance.

Overall it was a bit underwhelming but nothing particularly bad to say about it, mostly just felt like it lacked.

The conclusion

• I really enjoy this world, it includes other series form other parts of the map which I really enjoyed too and the concept is not common.
• The main characters are really fun but it did feel like they suffered a bit from third part breakup, so they could decide for real that they want to be together.
• We get a redemption arc that didn't feel fully satisfying mostly because I didn't feel like there were a lot of consequences for that character and our main female lead forgave and was always ready to forgive right away despite the awful things that character had done. I don't feel that because she was hurt was a good enough reason to have little to no consequences.
• It was a different type of book in which the antagonist is not a specific character and while I enjoyed it I know it wouldn't do for everytime.

It was a satisfying series that connects to a few others and ensured I will keep reading about this universe.

A world I enjoy and still catches me by surprise.

• The world building pulls from the other series in this universe and makes it feel very satisfying for me. I started in this world in the wrong order so I have a few spoilers that make this installment still feel very satisfying even if at the moment the main plot might not have made so much sense otherwise.
• The main female character is not a super physically fit character to start with which to me makes her feel more approachable because her strengths are many in the intelectual realm. So she adapts very quickly to her changing situation.
• Her male counterpart is very influenced by his species traits and is very driven from their connection in their interactions. So comes on very strong but not assholish.
• The side characters have a few standouts for me but somehow her cousin is not one of them even though she talks about her a lot.
• The main plot in the game and it gets very complicated very quickly, the author tries to make it make sense to us the strategies and all that but i could only really follow part of it and mostly because I had already the third installment in the universe that i think was better developed.
• The final 2 plot twists really made me want to keep going right away.

In the end it was a really good book for me, set in a world i've come to really love and will definitely continue reading.