Review: not ready for the presses, I think
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 05 18, 2014
If I can be forgiven for my repetition here, I thought this too was an OK read. Though I'm sorry to say of a lower quality than the previous episodes. In theory, it's a full novel, as opposed to the short story/novelette of the prequel and novella of book one. (I say in theory because it's listed as 306 pages, compared to 29 for Betrayed and 97 for Reluctant Protector. But the bundle of all three is listed at 301 pages. Figure that one out.) Regardless, I honestly don't think it was ready for publication.The issue is inconsistencies, most notably the time frame VERY unclear. The blurb says this book happens, "Almost one year after escaping Gentech Facilities." Later Cassie says it's been 18 months since she met Seth (which was less than a week before the escape and Peter's death), then the book claims, "Symone didn't buy into Seth's vision that Peter had survived the explosion a couple years ago." Symone was supposed to have gotten her GED and attended college at an accelerated pace (which would still take more than a year). Then later it's said, "When Cassie, Seth, and Jansen had rescued them six months ago..." Further on it's back to, "I've lived in fear of this for the last couple years" and THEN a mere page or so later it's, "You've been mother hen to his house of ruffians for nearly two years..." followed by, "Eighteen months ago, Cassie broke us out..." There were more, but you get the point.At some point, I started highlighting all the time references so that I could look at them side by side and try to figure out how long it had been since the events of the last book. Instead I found that it was utterly indecipherable, as if every time the author needed to post a time she just made one up.Honestly, it's not just the time between books that is inconsistent though. At one point Symone is said to have gotten her GED at 18 (after the escape) then it said that she was a scrawny 19-year-old when Jansen pulled her out of Gentech. She served Garret fried chicken at one point, when Lisa was said to have made roasted chicken. Symone entered a room in fitted cargo pants, but managed to take off her jeans.Or how about this one:"You’re the first person in three years I’ve been able to touch who seems somewhat unaffected.” He blew out a breath. “So what you’re saying is, what happened on your couch was just you enjoying someone touching you.” She raised a delicate brow. “Four years is a long time to go without human contact."There were a few copy edit kind of mistakes, but not enough to really discourage reading the book. But the above type of incongruencies pull me out of a story at almost warp speed.I also again found myself wondering about characters ages. I'm really not overly focused on this normally, but I needed to know some of them. For example, the way Jansen worried over Symore made me think of him as fatherly (so forties, maybe). Then it was revealed he had 'feeling' for her and I was left thinking he must be a comparable age to her early 20s. But this clashed with being an experienced combat veteran, so I didn't know how to picture him.In the end, this review is a bit like my experience reading the book. I was so distracted by all of that ↑ that I couldn't concentrate on the story. It's a shame too. I liked Symone. I like Garrett. I liked that we got to see more of Cassie and Seth. (Though it felt unnatural that they would just hand the final mission over to Symone, Garrett and Jansen, without participating...and it was hella rushed). I liked that I got to see a few of the other escapees. I even liked the set up for future books, but none of that is what will stick with me and be what I remember in the end.