A review by haddy
A Pale Light in the Black by K.B. Wagers

adventurous mysterious slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

<spoilers throughout> Right okay I have so much to say about this book. Honestly feel like it could have been amazing but it just.. wasn’t?

I feel like both major storylines were enough for a book so when you have them both together it just seems like both are rushed and don’t quite fit together. when they’re talking about the games it just seems insignificant compared to this big conspiracy , but nobody seems to care about it while these fun (but also somehow super serious) games are happening?

Max seems to have either a very complicated or zero personality (sometimes she was so boring lol), it isn’t really explained how she came straight out of the academy to a higher level than everyone else, and half the time everyone is excited about how good she is at everything but then they also say she’s not ‘competition ready’ what??

The pacing also doesn’t make any sense, sometimes insignificant conversations take ages, and sometimes weeks will go by in a second.

Also the scenes that should have been really fast paced and intense just didn’t feel as exciting as they should have done, although I will say I did enjoy some of the fight scenes.

Also, they tried to make this big deal about how jinx hated max at the start and didn’t trust her, but that really didn’t come across any time they actually spoke.. And then when they inevitably became friends there wasn’t really any obvious shift in their relationship, so any character development that was supposed to occur I don’t think was shown very well.

There seemed to be little to no consistency between the importance of the games, sometimes it’s just fun with a little rivalry, sometimes it’s so important that the captain is worried that she’ll lose her job if they don’t win? But then other parts of the military don’t take them seriously at all?

The end of the games was a massive anti-climax, given that they didn’t even do the ‘big game’ in the end, it just finished with jinx’s fight. 

Basically, I felt like I should have loved this book, but there wasn’t any character I particularly loved (although did like that it was so diverse, albeit there was a slight feel of tokenism at times) the fact that it was a sci-fi book without aliens was boring lol and it just dragged a bit:/