A review by crofteereader
reV by Madeline Ashby

2.0

It should be no surprise when I say that I hate villains. I do. Their narrow, selfish, predictable world-view gets very boring very quickly. The biggest handicap this book has is in choosing to have a villain be its primary point of view. Portia is the most stereotypical villain character ever - whenever she's frustrated, she kills random people / creates chaos somewhere else as kind of an afterthought, a distraction, a release. I mean, it was consistent with her character, but it got old very quickly.

The story is also told in these weird jumping pieces, with a whole big chunk dedicated to a random flashback whose payoff is one tiny moment that gets glossed over for the sake of moving the plot forward. Also, this book contradicts several things that happened in the previous book, iD, lifting an entire "radio show" verbatim but playing it months later in a completely different context, referencing a character who was dead in the previous book and killing him again.

Based on some weird interludes, part of me was guessing that this story was assembled (in-world) from pieces of data, which is why it felt so scattered, but that concept wasn't fleshed out nearly enough.

{Thank you again to Angry Robot for the free copies of this series! All thoughts are my own}