SeeDarkly™

It's a quick read that pulls you through it, and it certainly has a lot going on. I appreciated how it dealt with what's seems to be the obligatory for YA love triangle thing. Some of its twists didn't surprise me. The ending made me order the next book, Heavenly Tyrant, from the library to see where things go from there.

While the book's selling point seems to be the giant mecha, the majority of the plot is more about personal and societal politics.

I have a bit of an issue with the book being considered feminist by some people. For all that Zetian (and Iron Widow) talks about the poor girls murdered by Chrysalis piloting and the many horrible ways this society oppresses and mutilates women, almost every single other female character in the book, who are very few in number and don't get much page time, is an antagonist for Zetian, someone brainwashed by their society and thus against her one way or another. (Which makes one ask how Zetian alone is so different. She's just Not Like the Other Girls.) She's self-righteous but is she really fighting to make things better for anyone other than herself and the few people she deems worthy? ( spoiler ) For all I know, this might be the author's point about Zetian and we just haven't gotten there yet.

I found Li Shimin interesting. ( spoiler ) I do not trust Yizhi--he seems too good to be true for me, especially considering all the lying and betraying almost everyone does around Zetian--but I guess I'll have to wait to see if I'm right on that.


There was a thing in the text that stopped me dead: ( spoiler ) Maybe the author is trying to get at that, but "vacancy" is not it. Maybe it's meant to be something like "intensity"?

This edition is several printings in, so it's not a first pass thing either. It seriously stopped my reading flow dead for a while.