Oaths of Legacy

I don’t want to die. That’s what all heat-of-the-moment choices come down to, isn’t it? 

I remember the first book of this trilogy made me kind of angry when I read it, because the concept of it was right up my alley, but the execution of the concept was just... asdfghjkl, how was I supposed to be on those characters' side at all? And how was I supposed to view their romantic relationship, built entirely out of my most favorite tropes in the world, as something remotely shippable? It was so weird, like a meal made of all my favorite ingredients cooked in an entirely unpalatable manner.

This book is both better and worse and ultimately more of the same. We're now in Gal's POV, and hey, he's exactly as bad and manipulative as I saw him in the first book, except now at least the narrative doesn't seem to make excuses for him and instead highlights his mistakes and flaws. That's good. That's something I'm down for. Give me all the flawed, wrong, villainous protagonists that are explicitly framed as such, show me a clear reason they're like that, throw in a couple of sympathetic traits, and I'm along for the ride!

Unfortunately, with Gal, I didn't get that clear reason. It's like he's like that because his genocidal mom told him that's the way to be, and he hardly learns at all from the experiences he's facing. Every time he watches the Archons do their thing / listens to them speak about their more people-centric approach to governing where the ruler is the servant of their people and not the centerpiece the entire machine of the empire revolves around, he's like, "THAT’S NOT HOW GALACTIC EMPIRES WORK!" (This is a direct quote from his thoughts, by the way. Yes, in all caps. That's how it is in the book). He completely refuses to reflect on the crimes his mother and his empire have committed. He justifies genocide. He literally blames Ettian for letting him think he could be a more peaceful ruler than his mother, because "when I was planning my peaceful reign, I hadn't seen actual war, and Ettian had, so he should have known I would also have to be a tyrant" or some shit like that. He shows so little growth or even just reflection throughout the book, and when he does start swaying the Archons' way, it's because of emotional attachments alone.

What's more, I feel like the author chose a really bad approach to writing a manipulative character. It would have been so much better with an unreliable narrator angle, having Gal keep some cards up his sleeve and only vaguely alluding to his actual goals, making the reader doubt if he's playing Wen/Ettian/someone else or being genuine. Instead, he keeps spelling out his intentions and his methods in his head. "This is what I want to achieve, this is what I'm working with, this is what I'm doing." What's the fun of a manipulative protagonist if never manipulates the reader? :D

To top it all, I just felt like for this part of the overarching story's plot, Gal was the worst possible narrator simply because he's a political prisoner who directly interacts with only a few important players. Yes, he was eventually given reason to walk around more freely and observe stuff he really shouldn't be observing, and it required a few supposedly smart, experienced, battle-hardened characters to make some super dumb choices. But even with the author stocking the cards in his favor like that, he's still not really involved with some of the potentially more interesting parts of the story.

Meanwhile, it seems like from what can be seen of Ettian in this book, he might have actually gone through some of that growth I hoped to see in him in book 1. I wish I could have witnessed it. Also, Wen remains my absolute favorite and will be the sole reason I'll finish the trilogy (what's with that twist at the end, I'm dying to know). I wish I could read this entire story from her POV, because she's the one having all the big, protagonist-worthy crises, dilemmas, actions, and reactions. Come to think of it, she was the most proactive and the most affected on a deeply personal level in the first book, too. Maybe she should have been the protagonist of the entire trilogy.

For some other stuff: the writing here remains solid, the space battles are extremely intense and fun to read, and the plot has some interesting bits but suffers greatly from the pacing. In the first half, very few things happen, then there are a few really rushed sections in the second part. Once again, I attribute the structural problems to having Gal as the sole narrator—perhaps a dual or triple POV would have helped mitigate them.