the last book, although it was enjoyable at some points. The crazy plot twist, which I actually really liked, was why I continued to read the trilogy. It really fell flat though, and made me really not understand why so many people seem to love this series. 

 

The worst part of this book in my opinion was Mare. In the first book she could pass as just annoying, but she was just completely insufferable in this one. It made it genuinely awful to read and ruined the whole story for me. She is selfish, immature, self centered, and a complete mess who never learns even after constantly talking about it. Her inner dialogue is boring, and she just repeats the same thing over and over again. Why give a single shit about Maven?? You barely knew him. And putting your feelings over Cals? His literal brother? Just no. Stop. She doesn't give a crap about her family and is willing to let everyone around her die as long as she gets what SHE wants. She never listens to anyone and always seems to believe that she is right about everything, even though she has no leadership experience and has no idea how to lead an army. Her bad decisons get people killed time and time again she just doesnt care at all. Like GIRL you are not THAT important. 

 

I feel like the side characters could have made up for all of that, if they had any actual personalities. There are so many characters introduced in this and none of them are interesting or memorable. It's sad because I could really have seen them being more if the author did not focus so much on self centered Mare. I felt SO bad for Killorn, who is one of the only side characters that has a semblance of goals and personality. Mare treats Killorn horribly, and the fact that she always repeats that she is the one “letting” him do anything is gross. He is a grown man who is making his own choices, you are not in charge of him and you have no say about what he can and cannot do. 

 

The action and fight scenes are cool, even though they were pretty rushed. Seeing everyones powers mix together and learning about their unique abilities was great. I just wished the book stuck more to this type of stuff rather than jumping from place to place, which was just boring and didn't add anything. I also wished we could have seen more of them learning to use these abilities, especially the kids. I think especially in the Notch it would have been a great opportunity to build up the power system as well as the characters 

 

I actually really liked Maven as the villain. He's one of the few characters that has a lot of depth and you could understand his motives pretty well. Even though he is not the most powerful Silver, he is very good at manipulating and bending people to his will. I hope we can see more of that in the next book. 

 

Basically if you didn't like the first book I wouldn't bother reading this one. The negatives in Red Queen just get arguably worse, and doesnt have the same nail biting plot twists that were the best parts of the first book. Most of the action only happens at the end of this book, which did get interesting and would maybe make me read the next one solely off of that. But overall, it just was not a fun read and made me annoyed the entire time. If you did really like the first book though you should read this one because it has a lot of the same vibes.