Plot: ?/9.
Kyr and her mates lived in a stray spartan space group revenging humanity on aliens that had once invaded Earth. As her teammates were assigned one by one to different departments in the station, it was clear that either the protagonist or her frenemy Cloe would face the fate of being assigned to the nursery, being raped all the time, bearing unwanted kids for the future of this group, and taking care of kids till the end.
Cloe cried and so the protagonist decided to directly ask her uncle, aka the commander Jole, about their fate. Kyr was the greatest and the most hard-working soldier among girls, but it was she who was assigned to the nursery just like the weakest girl Elizabeth. She first visited the nursery where she heard from Elizabeth that her twin brother, Magnus, rejected the assignment and fled from them just like what their sister Ursa had done in the past.
Unbelievable, she found Magnus’ friend Avi to hack the classified file for more information about Magnus. It turned out his brother was assigned a surreptitious suicide task rather than truly committed treason. She then decided to rescue his brother. Avi, actually in love with his brother, promised to assist the protagonist under the condition that he could run away with her and never return.
So they robbed a ship but accidentally brought Yiso, an abducted alien, along with them.
( I suspend my read of the book containing 34 chapters at the end of chapter 8 for various reasons:
- The plot was boring and depressing. Maybe it would have been better, if Emily Tesh could have set more enjoyable scenes or attractive suspense in the beginning instead of keeping info-dumping and introducing minor characters. If a good novel is always the artwork of manipulating readers’ emotion and attention without relaxation, then Emily Tesh failed from the beginning.
- The characters were uninteresting or literally annoying. The protagonist was an unlovable or even barbarian bully striving to make everyone as anxious and demanding as herself for the so-called humanity.
- With 15% of context passing, the world-building was still mostly unknown, because the narrative always centered on the petty emotion of the protagonist rather than the civilization. For example, why did the aliens appear more feeble than human yet capable of defeating humanity in Doomsday? If the answer was that they possessed higher technology, then why did the station place emphasis on breeding and training more formidable soldiers instead of more intelligent engineers or scientists? Plus, the combat scenes were just so-so without any tension.
- I couldn’t concur with the belief of the protagonist or the station that it was okay to enslave women and corrupt the moral of civilization for the sake of humanity. I couldn’t believe that not any of youngsters around the protagonist somewhat displayed any discontent about the enforcement.
Overall, I felt the work not horrible but bearable, therefore I would like to switch to another book, because I believe this world never lack good books and interesting authors. )