Overall Rating: 5 out of 5

| This Mortal Coil - 5 Stars |

| This Cruel Design - 5 Stars |

| This Vicious Cure - 4 stars |

Genre: YA, Scifi / Fantasy, 5 Stars, Series 

People who should read this: If you love action packed Sci-Fi with an interesting world.

Unlike all of the reading I’ve done over the last two years, I actually finished this series in record time. That has to account for something right? I can’t tell you how many unfinished series are waiting to be read on my shelves. It’s not for a lack of trying, but at this point, I’ll have to reread the first book to even remember what’s happening. Who has the time to reread when there are so many good books out there? It probably helped that This Mortal Coil is completed. There’s no waiting around for two years - one for a duology - for all the books to be out. Maybe Adrienne Young is right with the idea of releasing her books quicker. 

Let’s get the logistics out of the way. If you haven’t read the first book, then make sure to check out my review for book one. Otherwise, be warned, there might be a few spoilers. I’ll try my best to keep the story under wraps. 

Where the first book blew my mind, melding imagination with facts and a dash of important topics, the rest of the series began to quickly fall flat. They turned into plain old action/adventure stories. Being a writer myself, I’ve always wondered when an author knows that there’s enough material for more than one book. Does the author sell it that way, pulling a plot from thin air to make it last, or do they just know there’s that much to the story? With the This Mortal Coil series, it felt like a little bit of both. There was plenty of story while at the same time playing the game of what can shock the reader. As you can tell, my rating sadly took a dip with the last book. 

Saying all of this, I don’t mean that the books weren’t good anymore, they just lost some of what I loved about them. The science in the books was still very strong and the characters became more important to the story than the plot. Those realistic pointers that kept the story grounded, sadly drifted away, leaving a fantastical story behind. And maybe it’s because I was binge reading the last book, but I really struggled to focus on the story at times. Which made for a confusing read. 

The best part about the series comes down to the twists and turns in the story. What you think is going to happen changes a lot and what is considered right and wrong really gets flipped on its head. Instead of focusing on the morality of open sourced code, the story morphs into the right and wrong of controlling people. With that, the world is explored more, the science is pushed to its limits, and the cast of characters explodes, a little to the detriment of the story. When we get around to learning about each character, their stories felt mashed together to give context for the plot or done for the shock factor, which again, made it all fall flat. 

With how well the first book was written, I guess I was just hoping for a better ending. On a good note, the ending did wrap up well and when I read the last chapter, I was content. There are no regrets and I’ll still be recommending the series to anyone and everyone that will listen to me. 

Happy Reading

Love Kait

Reading Challenge: 119/175