Reviews with content warning for Classism - Independent Study

Much like Book 1, I have a lot of thoughts and feelings about this one. Unlike Book 1, I just don't have enough invested in this book to devote much time to it, so hopefully this review can be relatively brief (with one exception).

Fortunately, I came into this one with much lower expectations. All of my critiques in my review of Book 1 still stand, and they just got worse in this one:
- I no longer love the world; there's almost nothing in it that I don't find boring and simplistic. The names continue to suck and lack any creativity.
- The phrase "The first four stages where humanity fought each other and then the three stages where the world fought back" continues to be used and I hate it more and more every time.
- We seem to get a confirmation early on that yes, the candidates do die when they flunk out, but we still don't get any convincing explanation or rationale for why anyone would think this is a good idea.
- The characters continue to (mostly) suck, although that is one of the only things I personally felt was an improvement from Book 1. Cia is still impossibly perfect

She's top of her class from the Testing; she's chosen as a leader for the initiation and of course she's a very reasonable and patient and forgiving and fair-minded leader and solves the hardest problem cause she's just so smart; she struggles with her classes but always gets things done; she gets chosen for the most elite internship ever cause she's just so cool; she figures out she's being spied on and comes up with a fix in like 2 seconds; she somehow finds out all the dirty secrets of the University almost immediately after arriving; etc etc etc

, Tomas is still boring, and Michal still has no agency. However, the characters of Enzo, Raffe, and Damone were a much-needed breath of fresh air, as their motivations were often unclear (in a good way) and it was difficult to tell what they would do next.

The plot is also less interesting this time, because it no longer has the built-in system of the Testing to keep things moving forward. The most interesting part is the Induction, and that's no accident: it's the part that's most similar to the og Testing. And it's very obvious that that's the only reason it was included; everyone wants some tension, some good old-fashioned backstabbing and I guess the high-stakes world of (*gasp*) higher education just wasn't cutting it.

Just like Book 1, there's a few fun contrivances that are so ridiculous I literally don't even want to devote energy to discussing them. And they all stem from

Symon Dean

. First,

the "twist" that the guy whose voice she heard but couldn't place was the same guy who gave her food during the final test of the Testing. Because this world is not well-developed or expansive, there's only so many characters it could possibly be. It's not like an overheard conversation in ASOIAF, where there's literally hundreds of characters to choose from. There's only like....5 adults and 2 of them are women. That just left Michal, Dr. Barnes, and the rebel man from Book 1; and there's only one of those that would sound "familiar" but be difficult to place. It was so obvious

. Second,

The idea that the rebellion is actually just a huge conspiracy of fake rebels to discredit the current leader and the rebels in one fell swoop is....I don't even know. I guess there's no obvious glaring hole in the logic, it could feasibly work and could feasibly be something someone thought was a good idea, but...it just feels like a huge reach. And this world isn't complex enough for something like that to feel like a fully realized idea; again, compare it to ASOIAF – that's a series where complex plots like this can feel realistic and complex and interesting. Here is just feels ridiculous

. And third,

You're telling me that this whole time they've known everything that Symon knew in Book 1: about her father and the mayor downplaying their town's achievements, her father's memories, her rebellious actions throughout the Testing and specifically throughout the fourth test. They knew that she could and did take the bracelet off multiple times to do something shady. They knew she took a drug to thwart their truth serum. And they still let her through the Testing? I call BS.

There was one good thing: the finale. Or actually, right before the finale.

Cia's murder of Damone was a great plot point. Finally, finally, she does something truly wrong. She is justified, but it was a hard choice and honestly, choosing to spare him would've been the typically Cia thing to do. Finally, Cia does something to surprise us, something to make us care, something to shake things up a bit. I was really pleased with that scene.

I did mention there would be one part that wasn't even trying to be brief. Again, much like my review for Book 1, I have a rant. Click at your own risk:

There is a huge glaring mistake in this book and it made me so so so so irrationally mad. I know it's just a book, I know it doesn't matter, but this would've been so easy to get right. It's just embarrassing.
The only notes I took while reading this book were of the first years in Cia's Government class. I started doing this when they were introduced to their older student guides, because the author was very helpful and gave us an explicit list of who was in each group, and I thought it would be fun to track as people died or flunked out. Here was the list:

Ian
1. Cia
2. Kaleigh
3. Raffe

Himani
1. Boy
2. Boy
3. Boy

Sam
1. Will
2. Olive
3. Griffin

Lazar
1. Rawson
2. Enzo
3. Juliet

Girl with wide-set eyes
1. Boy
2. Boy
3. Boy
4. Girl

The important thing to note here is that there are 5 girls (Cia, Kaleigh, Olive, Juliet, and the unnamed girl).
Next, we get the groupings for the Induction:

Team 1:
1. Griffin
2. Raffe
3. Unnamed Tosu City student
4. Drake

Team 2:
1. Olive
2. Vance
3. Unnamed Tosu City student
4. Rawson

Team 3:
1. Cia
2. Enzo
3. Will
4. Damone

Team 4:
1. Jacoby
2. Unnamed Tosu City student
3. Kaleigh
4. Juliet

At this point, we know there are 5 girls, but we only know where 4 of them are. The unnamed girl must be the "Unnamed Tosu City student" on one of the other teams. However, this is cleared up quickly enough because Cia's group run's into Griffin's group, and there's a girl on their team. So that must be the fifth unnamed girl. All the girls are accounted for, so the students on Olive and Jacoby's team have to be boys.

Except, they're not. Because when Olive's group makes it back, Cia claims the fourth member of their group was a girl. And we later learn her name was Izzy. So who on earth was the unnamed girl in Griffin's group?? I guess there must be 6 girls?? And there was another point later that I can't recall where there were now 3 girls when there should be 4. This is such a small detail and it really shouldn't matter that much but it just demonstrates an utter lack of attention to detail that makes me not want to even read it. Clearly these characters don't even matter to the author so why should I care about any of it?

Overall, this book wasn't as disappointing as the first, but I also just don't care about it nearly as much. There's not much worth reading (or writing, for that matter) here. It's just kind of pointless. Once again, I wavered between 2 and 3 stars with this one, but much for the same reasons that swayed me for Book 1, I decided to give this 2. There are not many things this book does well, and even when I was the target audience, I didn't love this book.

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