Book #04 - Sovereign (Nemesis #2) by April Daniels
Sovereign (Nemsis #2) by April Daniels
Danny has finally gotten used to being a super hero, but the challenges never stop.
I liked how unreliable a narrator Danny was in this book, and the fights were much more intricate and full of tension than the first part. A great second book indeed!
Note: It's been already six weeks since I've read it, and I forgot almost all the character names. Sorry. /o\ I hope you understand what I'm talking about, anyway.
* I did *not* get what the problem with Danny and her girlfriend was. I first thought that her girlfriend turned away from her because she was too gung ho about fighting people. That was a great reason, I thought, but in the end she comes back to her without any of those problems being resolved. That confused me. I guess I can understand that they love each other too much to give up on each other, even with the problems not being resolved, but I'm not sure that was what happened?
* I loved her girldfriend having a cybernetic arm. She got badly injured in the first part, and hasn't gotten used to it completely yet. I love how everyone in the book has their own demons to fight.
* The AI (Doc) was also better fleshed out than in the first part. There were still things that were a little "too easy" (or "too hard", really), like that she insisted on being one person and drinking a lot, but at some point she just gave up on those limitations and made herself three versions and removed her alcohol addiction. I liked that, because it showed how dire their situation was. Dire enough that even the AI got over herself. ;)
* I was also confused that Nemesis wasn't the unfathomable enemy that it looked to be in part one. It was still scary, but not the unbeatable physical anomaly it was made out to be before.
* I liked all the other superheroes - except Greywitch. And not because Greywitch was the villain, but because she was underdeveloped and barely changed from book one. I actually think we didn't get to know anything new about her in this book. (Except for the implication that she was chromosomatically maybe not a woman, which was way too unlikely for me to take at face value. Hm.) Maybe a little from her interaction (ouch) with Danny in the torture chamber and with Sovereign. It didn't feel like a lot of new information to me, though.
* But everyone else was great. The green siblings who were so so mad at Doc. And the gentle giant who was willing to forgive and forget until Danny fucked it up. The Russian adversary (Red ... something?), who fought her tooth and nail and no hard feelings. :D
* Princess Panzer was very annoying, but I pitied her anyway. Her father was a nazi asshole.
* The main villain, Sovereign, was... well, yes, a nazi asshole. I loved his plot and how Danny ran afoul of him without a clue at first.
* Her torture at the hands of Greywitch was *terribly harrowing*. I loved how it was described, and how very close to death Danny was the whole time. Awesome writing!
* And then the custody fight with Danny's parents, and her being incarcerated during her trial. *sniff*
* I loved how dangerous the final fight was, too. How they barely even got to the island, and then how Danny fought Sovereign with all her might. It was such a well-described fight scene. Like all of them, actually, they were one and all much much better than the fights in the first book. And I don't even like fights! But these were amazing. Terrible and painful and so well written.
* The only thing I didn't quite get is why they didn't use their magic anti-nullification pendants more offensively. The fight could have been *much* shorter if she'd just slapped one of those pendants on him much earlier in the fight. Huh.
* I am not quite sure what to think about the goddess's daughter. I could understand that it's almost impossible to break that magical inheritance of powers, but i could also see the daughter's point. That was such a tragic story with no good ending. I liked it even as I found it very painful.
* I thought the off-handed "oh and I'll go into therapy" comment at the end was cheap. I wanted her to have to deal with her problems within the book.
* I'm also not sure what to think about Greywitch's fate. Getting made dead and used as an encyclopedia by the great school of magic seemed like a too neat way to end her story. Deus ex machina in reverse. Ah, well.
5 stars - Despite the few things that I thought were left too open or tied up too neatly, the book was overall really amazing. I tore through it in a week, and I found it even better than the first one, which is not an easy feat (because I gave the first one 5 stars already! :D). Definitely recommend it.
1 - 5 stars - The Obelisk Gate (The Broken Earth #2) by N. K. Jemisin [DW link & LJ link]
2 - 4 stars - The Stone Sky (The Broken Earth #3) by N. K. Jemisin [DW link & LJ link]
3 - 4 stars - Blackout (Newsflesh #3) by Mira Grant [DW link & LJ link]
4 - 5 stars - Sovereign (Nemesis #2) by April Daniels [DW link & LJ link]
x-posted from dw (comments:
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