Kate Bond

Man. I really... Man. One thing that sucks about my having worked on political campaigns is that I am annoyed even more than the average person by political shit that does not ring true. And this shit just absolutely does not ring true. Like, on a basic level. Book one of this series is like the original Star Wars movies, and this one is like the prequels. And Aguirre found a kind of silly way to replicate the romantic relationship in book one here, and in doing so kind of belittled the effects of PTSD.There are also scenes that take place in, like, the comments on a message board, and while I get what Aguirre was going for, they really fell flat. Ditto the news interviews. Ditto the journal entries of the woman who owned Jax's AI assistant before her.There is also a twist in this book re: the AI assistant that is so obvious to the reader it makes Jax and Vel, her brilliant alien best friend, seem dumb as fuck.Oh. Man. Another thing. a big deal is made, twice early in the book, about how bad these aliens think humans smell. But at the end of the book, when several humans dress up as aliens (it wasn't as dumb as it sounds, but it came close to being), the smell thing does not come into play. And it should have done. I mean. First of all, three times makes a pattern. But also, why set that shit up if it's not going to come back into play later on? And that's a problem I've had with all of Aguirre's writing, including [b:Bronze Gods|15808271|Bronze Gods (Apparatus Infernum, #1)|A.A. Aguirre|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1352856158s/15808271.jpg|18128401], which she co-wrote with her husband. She does not follow through on things she has promised her audience. I'm not sure how something like this can even happen. It seems so obvious.Things I do like: There is a major black character (whose skin color is described in ways that include neither chocolate nor coffee with a specific amount of cream in it), and a lesbian couple is at the center of this story. The bad-ass mechanic is a lesbian princess whose entire family was killed in a coup. Fully half of the main cast is female. The big bad guy is a woman. And as I've said before, no one writes action better than Aguirre. The problem is that most writers write everything else better than her.I will read the last three books in this series, but I will take a break before doing so, because I'm frustrated.