I accepted a review copy of TC Marti‘s Civil War as part of its book tour with Love Book Tours.
I was Culled at age five into the Bastille Military, the World of Rondure’s superpower…
…Having lived on-base for thirteen years, military life taught me two things: Mastery of the Smoke Element and to never apologize about using it on enemies
Now that I’m awaiting a sure death sentence for the crime of exposing Bastille’s true crimes, they’ve left me with no choice. When they try to extradite me, I will call upon my Sword of Smoke and escape this predicament, using every combat technique they taught me against them.
Then, I’ll take it upon myself to finish a mission I started years ago; to unplug the People of Bastille and let them know who the real enemy is: their home nation and its Capital City of Paramount.
As I go rogue, every authority figure with money, power, and influence in the Bastille Empire will want me dead. Thanks to them, I’m one of the most powerful Smoke Masters in the World of Rondure. And I’m ready to break the spell the people of my nation have lived under for over a century.
*Sigh* If you’ve read very many of my reviews then you know that one of the things I complain about most frequently is picking up a book labeled as ‘Book 1’ and discovering that it’s actually a spin-off of another series and not really a first book. Civil War is just one more such book (the third series in its universe, as far as I can tell) and I was completely lost for darned near the whole book.
This makes reviewing it difficult. Because I’m not sure how much more of the plot, characters, world, etc I would have understood and been invested in (or not) if I had read the previous books. I can’t know, for example, if this book honestly just has really weak world-building (and erratic plotting)—it does—or if the author simply deemed it unnecessary because I’m just supposed to already know the world(s), factions, religions, even some of the characters, etc—I don’t. But as it stands, I didn’t enjoy my time with Civil War.
The writing is pedestrian but perfectly readable. The editing seems pretty clean. I like the cover. But beyond that, too much really hinges on the fact that I don’t think it stands alone, and I read it as a stand-alone.
I suppose this is an unconventional ‘review.’ But it’s the best I can do and stay remotely positive….neutral-ish.
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