Trail of Lightning

3 stars

First and foremost, the writing and execution were great. I enjoyed the pacing and the sentence structure is one I'm a fan of because it made the visceral experiences vivid and haunting.

The story, however, was heavy-handed. You were slapped across the face with the hints of betrayals and deception that when the actual they all come to light, I felt bad for the main character of course but also like I already saw it coming. If there were more to the story besides the heavy manipulation of the protagonist, maybe I would be more inclined to continue with the series but that was essentially all this book amounted to.

The biggest letdown were the characters and their relationships. None of them involving Maggie (except the wholesome father-daughter relationship with Tah) were developed beyond the surface. I wanted to believe that there was love in her previous partnership but there was so much telling and no showing, everything about their partnership was perfunctory and no budding chemistry whatsoever. The new partnership was more believable but again, where was the chemistry. EVERY single character was more interested in hinting and outright pointing out how Maggie wasn't seeing all of her own potential that it didn't leave any room for friendships, or relationships in general to bud and blossom in the short length of the book.