Reader's Discretion Advised

Naeth is a useless damsel-in-distress of an ingenue whose default method of dealing with issues is running away. God. He's such a woman. Who is permanently PMS'ing. Just...the way he reacts to things. It's like every horrible stereotype of women all wrapped in one. It's like Padme Amidala, but when in II and III, when she was the useless damsel in distress and the useless sobbing wreck, respectively.

Reijir I thought I would like/I really wanted to like, but he's got issues. A lot of them. And not the nice angsty ones. Fundamental character problems. More on that later.

Keiran...okay. So he's a breeder. The biggest issue is the author made it out like there are really, really obvious defining features of breeders compared to other males, but all it boiled down to were variances in nipples. Something about slightly plumper and paler areolas. ...Do the people here just all have the same nipples, then, regardless of skin color, race, whatever? Just copy+paste nipples across this universe? Cuz otherwise, slight variances in nipples seems rather arbitrary. Like "Hmm...Yeah, I think this baby's nipples are slightly larger than the average. He must be a breeder. No, no. I'm sure. Look at them. Nevermind the baby's slightly larger than the average; his nipples are definitely slightly larger than the average baby's nipples."
I mean, I get it. It's not like the wome- *cough cough* I mean breeders have obvious differences, like no penis and a vagina, since EVERYONE has a penis AND vagina! I mean sheath, of course.
No, now I'm just getting really unnecessarily snarky. But still. Nipple variations? This is fantasy; go all out with some sort of birth mark or third nipple or something. Something obvious like that, you know. (Maybe not a third nipple...)


I wanted to like Reijir. He seemed like he had a lot of nice angst in store.

Reijir is an abusive asshole. There's no way around it. He may not be consciously trying to be an abusive asshole, but his gross negligence and callous disregard and inherent self-centeredness...they make him an abusive asshole. And Naeth crawls back for more each time. Why? Clearly he has no idea what love actually is. No, love is NOT about enduring everything the other person dishes out because they profess love to you. Love can't be all about giving. That would be codependence.

Another thing that really, really bothered me was the lack of any mention or even allusion, really, to Darion for a good half of the book, maybe more. I mean, you can't just mention him in the prologue, and then ignore the fact that you introduced him as Reijir's love interest. That's like Sophie from Da Vinci Code if you read the first book (Angels and Demons) first. You go through DVC wondering what the hell happened to Vittoria. Go finish and still wonder what happened to Vittoria. You see the two of them ending up together and wondering what happened to Vittoria.
I kept wondering what the hell happened with Darion.

At first I thought, "Hey. We didn't actually get to know Darion at all. Maybe he is a jackass after all." Except in the meantime, all we get are examples of why Reijir is a jackass; Naeth is a useless, irrational, thoughtless, sobbing, avoidant wreck; Keiran's pretty much a fop; and Ruomi, a minor character, is probably the only character worth liking.

Yeah, we're told later about Darion's perfidy and shit, but by then, too little too late.

Keiran I wish the author had characterized better/less shallowly. The MCs...I think I'm just disgusted with them that idgaf.

To add insult to injury, Naeth's name is just aesthetically unappealing. It makes me think of "naif," partly because that describes him so well.

The "explanation" (of Darion's evil, diabolic, conniving perfidy) did not endear the MCs to me at all. I thought Reijir was a paranoid bastard who read too much into too little and thus gave Darion plausible cause for breaking it off with him and taking R's dad's deal.

Yeah, I didn't like it.