Connie Suttle

This one started out horribly with a neverending string of incredible bullshit.
First, she is being taught how to properly drink from a human after she lived off of humans for weeks by herself without ever hurting anyone and only getting caught on her very first drink before she even knew about compulsion.
Not by practising on someone mind you, no, by being forced to being bitten by a stranger.
Which as we already know causes an intense orgasm. WHAT THE FUCK. This crosses the borders to sexual show more abuse even if that wasn't actually the intension. Especially because it's completely unnecessary as she, again, is aware of all of this already, again, what the fuck.

Then, to test if she could keep behaving like a human under drug influence apparently, she is being forced to drink from a drug addict.
Not only did the master not make sure that the guy was safe to drink from by checking what kind of drugs he even consumed and how much and instead forced her to drink from the next best junky, no, instead of telling her beforehand what this was even about he just forced her to do it and then threatened her with compulsion afterwards when she started to suffer the effects of the various drugs. I can not put into words how much irresponsible bullshit is contained within this short first section of the story.
Not only that but then we are constantly told that this incompetent, inane prick is a "good teacher".
Good riddance. I pity the author for her school classes if she considers this a "good teacher".
And all this happened within the first 20 minutes of the audiobook. show less

where to begin?
Connie Suttle is a Super Nova when it comes to creating worlds within worlds! This was the first book that I read of hers, and i was pulled in like a fish on a line! Seriously, if she were a drug, id have been six feet under now, from OD'ing!
This is the first in the series, and folks get your wallets out because you will not be able to stop at the one book!
Connie draws you into the story, and well while you fall in love with Lissa, and she is in no way a victim.. you really show more just want to beat the crap out of several people by the end of the book, just to stand up for Lissa!
What drew me to Lissa from the start, she didnt start out as your perfect, sexy bombshell who is kick ass.. she was you or me.. struggling, crippled by grief and well ready to just lay down her head and give up.. does life give her a break? nope! just decided to kick her while she was down.. and continued to do so.. if she was not the strongest willed woman i have ever met.. she would have just said.. F it a long time ago.. I dont want to write too much more.. without adding spoilers.. but if folks want spoilers happy to give em *LOL* show less

Normally I do a plot summary to start reviews, but really what’s the point? Lissa is awesome, faces absolutely no conflict or difficulty and is now ruling an entire functioning planet by wont of her Sueishness. Everything works out because it just does, there’s no conflict or complications and Lissa is just totally awesome and super powerful all the time.

Oh dear gods it gets worse. It actually gets worse

See, Lissa, the worst person of in the universe, Supreme Queen of Mary Sues is now in show more charge of an entire planet. She’s also, apparently An Adult.

But this adult who is the supreme all powerful dictator of a planet decides to run off and sulk every time things go wrong. Something happens she doesn’t like? She leaves the planet or goes back in time and pouts for a few weeks/months before coming back and deigning to rule her kingdom again. And absolutely no-one calls her on this shit. This woman is supposed to be, at least, well into her 40s. She behaves like a petulant teenager

Of course, everyone may be just happy to see her gone because she is an utterly terrible ruler whose planet would collapse were it not for the power of her Sueness and endless super powered lovers with god like abilities.

Her planet has absolutely no resources. She’s literally just moving a gazillion vampires and comesueli (proto-vampires which basically act as a slave race but no-one talks about that) to a planet with no industry, agriculture or industry but hey everything’s working out. And Lissa is micromanaging EVERYTHING. Sports, culture, nascent industry. Everything. She takes a day out of her schedule to help pick fruit with half her council for a winery. A single winery. She has an entire planet to manage and she spends pages concerned with this one winery run by one of her favourites because it’s going to shore up a PLANET WIDE ECONOMY. They make decisions on the economy and agriculture going forwards with no attempt to study what their planet or population can actually do – just “hey, let’s do this” and lo, they do.

She literally has a little snit because tourists will be coming to her capital and *gasp* photographing her palace. She seriously decides the capital city of her new planet will be closed off except for certain days when she can be out of the city and absolutely no-one questions either the draconian nature of this or how unworkable it is.

She has another snit because her counsellors raise the idea of tourism and gambling as a way to prop up her non-existent actual economy. Why? Because she doesn’t want such debauchery and dirty slutwhorejezebels on her planet!

So how does it not collapse? Because the author has decided it won’t. The comseuli are all magically becoming pregnant because they “somehow” know more of them will be needed. Oh and a sudden blood substitute has been invented which is convenient for a vampire planet. And the Reth Alliance – a kind of military and commercial union of several planets, has decided to accept them despite them having no infrastructure, military or, well, anything to offer at all (oh hey they may be able to produce wine and organic produce which there is a convenient demand for but they’re going to fund an entire planet’s economy on this?!) but hey join up they’re happy to have them.

Or the planet is HALF IN DARKNESS all the time which is super awesome for vampires but for some reason this doesn’t affect the temperature of the dark side or make it a frozen, pretty useless wasteland.

Of course a lot of this is helped by Lissa having the most ridiculous Sue collection of super powers ever. Not only can she travel through time and space and have infinite murder powers but she also has the ability to tell if someone is good or bad with a thought. She doesn’t even have to be in the presence of the person – she literally picks and chooses who is good or bad based on their RESUMES. (oh, and queen of the world? Is literally vetting every employee coming to her planet. Every last employee). This is such pathetic lazy writing and has been throughout the series – Lissa knows who is evil because she just DOES and she’s never wrong and then she has the stupidly over the top godlike ability to kill everyone she wants

Worse – not only does she have this incredibly simplistic ability to tell good from evil (because everything is totally that simple guys!) but she’s willing to slaughter literally thousands if not millions of people on that basis of this woo-woo sense. She will literally slaughter them or leave them to die. But it’s ok if thousands of people are dying because Lissa has declared them evil

In fact, let’s go with this brutal tyranny thing because my gods, this is awful. Remember in the last book when she decided to condemn entire species to become slaves because EVIL? It’s confirmed here that there are 70,000 of these people working in slavery and the only complaint is that they’re BAD at what they do (because you’ve taken people used to mega future technology and tried to turn them into 16th century farmers? Maybe? Did no-one recognise why this would be a bad idea? No because aaaaargh!?). Oh and there’s now only 60,000 because there numbers have been whittled down and absolutely no-one gives the slightest fuck about the genocide of 10,000 people through brutal slave labour conditions?! But it’s ok because Lissa has declared them evil!

They eventually decide to round up these 60,000 “trouble making” slaves and dump them on a completely wild planet with no shelter, food or water – and no means or knowledge of how to make any (Lissa doesn’t bother about this because they’ve ”had enough handed to them already”)

Even if you discount the mass slaughter and slavery, I’m not kidding about Lissa micromanaging everything. There’s not even a pretence of democracy or even reasoned decision making. She decides everything on a whim and we get cringeworthy moments like them deciding what the age of consent should be for the comsueli and they completely ignore what the comsueli themselves say – because this entire underclass of servile followers has no rights or say at all under Lissa’s dictatorship.

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Lissa is back trying to stop the evil vampires and their terrorist minions doing nefarious things for reasons (it would be nice if they actually explained a little of why they’re doing this beyond EVIL AND EVIL SPACE ELVES)

She has her bag of tricks and super powers to stop them – but she has to do that with her leash constantly being pulled by the men in her life. Her fathers, her husbands, they all have plans for her, they all have an agenda and they all have uses for her. Whether she show more wants it or not

Ok, I’m going to write a lot about the toxic trainwreck that is Lissa’s relationships in this book so I’m going to cover everything else briefly before diving into that cess pool

The writing/plot in general –lazy lazy lazy. We have aliens dropping in for no other reason than to be ridiculously powerful and scatter deux ex plot-solvers in their wake. We have alien worlds that are still less alien than Ohio – seriously, Lissa would have more culture shock travelling to China than she would have going to these worlds. We have a species of proto-vampires which in any other book may have been an interesting way to develop an actual culture and a way for vampires to exist as an independent species – but no, this is a useful slave species who are also useful food. This is about it.

Which applies, pretty much, to Lissa’s powers of well. Super misting that lets her kill everyone. The actual power to smell evil to render any kind of tracking, investigation or questioning or any actual work completely moot. Every encounter is just resolved by throwing super powers at it.

We have the same minimal diversity – another world with almost no female supernaturals because REASONS, gay characters who lurk in the background and POC largely being absent (but we have a sinister Middle-Eastern terrorist)

Now the cess pool. This book continues on the series’ habit of having one of the worst relationships I’ve encountered. And, ye gods, that is saying something considering what I have read

Lissa’s history of abuse actually exacerbates everything because all of her reaction to the terrible way everyone – and especially Gavin – inflicts on her is all blames on her past and being such a delicate fragile female, bless her little dainty heart. Him screaming and breaking things in a raging snit because she dares to not obey him causes her to collapse in terror – and it’s because she’s fragile, not because he’s abusive. And everyone’s supposed to accept that his behaviour isn’t abusive because he won’t hit her – that’s the toxic message of this book; if he doesn’t hit her, it’s not abuse. He can scream and yell. He can swear and rage for hours. He can refuse to listen to her and berate her. He can be a constant reminder of the fact he once imprisoned and threatened to have her killed. But it’s not “abuse” if it’s not violent… apparently (and the constant underlying threat of violence doesn’t count?).

And all of this is doubly clear by how AWARE Lissa is of his disapproval, of his emotions – it’s the hyper-aware reaction of an abuse victim constantly worried about his reaction. She’s constantly worried about how Gavin will react – even when defying him and doing her own thing anyway it’s with full acknowledgement of the fact that Gavin will disapprove and there will be consequences.

This doesn’t just apply to Gavin – just about every relationship she has with the men in this book (and they are ALL men. There are two teeny tiny female roles that barely appear otherwise it’s all men men men) is toxic. In fact, except for one FBI agent and some tiny side characters, they all slot into 3 categories:

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