Speed-Reading Book Nerd Reviews

Hench

By Natalie Zina Walschots

Anna works on the side of evil. I don't particularly know why--the character doesn't have any backstory or family history mentioned--but when we meet her, she's a temp worker/"hench" who gets employed by villains. To some degree it's like working any kind of weird temp job--her current employer, the Electric Eel,  prides himself on being sensitive and "caring" about employees and things like that. She commiserates with friends, she has a date  go wrong when work interferes.

Then she gets forced to be on television to prove that the Eel is "inclusive" (i.e. "I'm a booth babe?"), has to holde a brain-manipulating ray to a kidnapped teen's head, and gets her leg permanently damaged by Supercollider, the superhero, when he smacks her into a wall. She's immediately unemployed, living at her best friend's house, and dwelling on how superheroes cause so much collateral damage. She makes spreadsheets ,she creates a blog, and she gets recruited for a new job, working for the superhero Leviathan, who also has a grudge against Supercollider.

Anna rises in her job- earning the title/nickname "The Auditor," as she uses data analysis to strategize how to slowly, painfully, take Supercollider down by removing his support system. She loses her best friend, she gets new friends at work, and she starts having tender feelings for Leviathan, though this isn't really a romance and clearly god only knows how that would work given Leviathan's current physicality. (That felt a little weird/token/flat, honestly.) She may be handicapped, and it's ambiguous as to whether or not she has power herself or just awesomeness by analysis, but she does get respect and power of her own, even as even she feels bad for some of the collateral damage she does trying to end someone else's collateral damage. 

This book has both a fair amount about "the banality of evil," or what it's like to work in an "evil" office and how it's not necessarily all that different, and also "yeah, superheroes are also kinda evil, or a good chunk of them anyway, when they cause collateral damage on other people." Which, good point. Supercollider himself gets worse and worse so you certainly don't feel bad about his being taken down--especially what he does to Anna later on. And when his unhappy girlfriend Quantum Entanglement is brought into the mix, things get hardcore.

This is a dark book, but an interesting one, where you can certainly debate morality all day long while reading it. Everyone's got their motivations and judgments and in their own way, everyone's guilty. 

I give it four stars. I don't quite consider it a downer (it kind of ends as well as that situation is going to get), but it certainly gives you a lot to think about. 

 

 

The Roughest Draft

By Emily Wibberly and Austin Siegemund-Broka.

Pretty simple plot here: Katrina and Nathan met at a writers event, hit it off, decided to partner together on book writing. Their first two books were hits, and they were attracted to each other. But Nathan was engaged before they met, got married, and they never ah, quite got together. The partnership split up. Katrina has had writer's block for 4 years and got engaged to their agent, sleazy Chris. Nathan got divorced and wrote a solo book that nobody likes. Four years later, their publisher and sleazy Chris force them to write the last book on their contract in the same house they wrote the last one in. The only other person around is their mutual friend Harriet, who got friend-dumped by the both of them after their partnership broke up and is reasonably annoyed about it  but willing to take them back.

It's a pretty insular and simple novel. But written well? And steamy, no less. These two clearly have some kind of soulmate connection here even if one of them is with someone else, and nobody else is going to live up to that. Chris in particular is heinous--we're told by Katrina that he had some really good moments early in the relationship, but the engagement is dragging on with no wedding set, Chris is bothered that Katrina has writer's block, and oh, he's totes kewl if she sleeps with Nathan as long as the book gets written. (Milking jealousy is A Thing for Chris.) What a sleazebag. At one point Katrina remarks that they've served the sentence for a crime they didn't commit (i.e. everyone assumes they slept together). 

I did enjoy how they wrote together--clearly their feelings for each other creep into their writings, literally so. And then there's the touching and things like that, which is hot. And when Katrina finally just spits it out in an interview as to why the partnership broke up--wow. Also, there's stuff like this: "I smile, recognizing my own descriptions plagiarized on my mouth. We know exactly how the other likes to be touched. We've read each kiss, studied every caress. The result is the feeling of a first kiss with someone you've kissed a hundred times." 

The one thing I didn't like is the back-and-forth-hedginess that goes on for a bit after they get back together--you just wanna be like "oh, come on, stop it and just go there already." But it all works out in the end. Four stars. 

 

Don't Kill The Birthday Girl: Tales From An Allergic Life

By Sandra Beasley.

I should probably say that I don't have food allergies, but several of my friends do and I bought/read this book while staying with one of those people. So I'm not reading it from the POV of someone who has them, which may be the audience for this? At any rate, it's a very good book and also well, very affecting to read about the kind of shit that poor Sandra has to deal with, as someone who's been allergic to a lot of foods since birth. Everything has to be checked all the time and there's constant food pitfalls to fall into, both accidentally and deliberately.  The title comes from having to tell people to not touch her after they've eaten (non-allergy-free) cake at her birthday parties, and she's sad that that's what people remember about her, that she's "Allergy Girl." (Or "Fish Girl" at the college dining hall when that's all she can eat.) Or that she has to constantly police anyone she lives with such as a roommate or boyfriend about their food because someone might eat pizza and then touch the phone three hours later. It sounds exhausting and she notes that even with all of the precautions she does at weddings, about half of the time she still ends up having a reaction. She has them a lot, including doing that on "the road to Hana," in which of course there's nowhere to get medical treatment so they had to drive back on a super windy road for three hours. shudder 

It also has given her some mental complexes as well--like being annoyed that her sister chooses to limit her food options by being vegetarian, and having a realization that she doesn't like to eat peas even though that's one of the few safe foods. Can she even HAVE preferences as to what to eat? She has to eat and eat and eat the few foods she can eat, so she may be prone to overeating in those circumstances since her options are so limited. 

Sandra explains that even though you have to have an epi-pen, nobody wants to actually have to use the epi-pen and then have to go to the hospital about it, so they'd rather pound Benadryl and be out of it for 24 hours if that cures it without yet another hospital visit. (Which certainly lines up with my having to watch a friend of mine having a reaction to see if he needed to go to the hospital and finding out that no, he doesn't have one...he was fine eventually.) Another person with food allergies that she interviews in the book says she associates food with death, and well...yeah, that seems reasonable. 

The book isn't entirely about her experiences, as she does have some more research-y chapters as to what to do in schools (should the entire school be banned from having peanuts, really?) and debunking the "kiss of death" story about the girl who supposedly died from kissing her boyfriend after he eat peanuts. (He ate them like nine hours beforehand and she had some other exposures going on.) Another chapter was about going to a food allergy conference to see what the doctors say about their patients. The one chapter I didn't really get was the "foodie" chapter, in which Sandra tries to be some kind of foodie and watch cooking presentations and take a cooking class where she has to have her then-boyfriend there as backup in case she can't touch something. This seemed pretty illogical to me there.

She also talks to people who have allergies and/or their kids may develop them--she notes in horror being at her best friend's birthday party and watching the friend's 1-year-old getting hives from the cake, and another person wondering if her kid is going to have allergies and how annoying it is that her kid appears to be having a different food allergy than everyone else. Sandra is reasonably concerned if she ever had kids, how could she handle the situation, literally, if they do or don't have what she has. She does mention having relationships here and there, including one long-term one in the past, but I did kind of wonder if she could have put more in there about that since to some degree it sounded like the guy cared but also maybe not as much as he should have? She also notes that she has to live her life scrutinizing everything and her ex was a freewheeling slob, and that just couldn't fly. "My allergies leverage every concern...into a litmus test: Do you love me? Then rinse out that glass. Sometimes I wonder if I'm destined to live alone. Otherwise, I'll have to accept this reality in which once or twice every week I break out in hives in my own house." 

(I am reading a lot of "Am I The Asshole?" lately and when food allergies come up there, hoo boy. Recent examples: OP gets peanut cake for their kid, gets allergy-free cake for the allergic kid, but does serve them in the same house and doesn't warn anyone ahead of time this is happening and OP wants to have one sushi dinner, which turns into "we don't have jobs and we're living with someone who cooks shellfish in the house but my wife can't object to it because we're living on his charity." Oy vey. Definitely thought of this book while reading the last one.)

At any rate...doesn't look like this sort of thing is going to improve as life goes on and nobody really seems to know why it's going on, so she'll just have to continue. You just have to hope that you find people who can deal with it, such as one lady's friends having Jenny-safe spoons, or the fancy restaurant that kept trying out different dishes until Sandra had some foods she could eat. "My job is to center on staying safe in this world, but my job is also never to assume the world should revolve around keeping me safe."

Four stars. 

Paladin's Strength

By T. Kingfisher.

Previous book in this world here.

Sister Clara is a lay nun* with the Order of St. Ursa. Her entire order was attacked and kidnapped. Sister Clara got sick and was left for dead, has since recovered, and been having an interesting time of things since.then. She ends up meeting Istvhan, one of the paladins from the previous book. He's on the lookout for the Smooth Men, the creepy clay/necromancy murder creatures on the loose in the last book. Clara's looking to rescue her friends, and Istvhan is totally willing to partner up and help her with this. Of course both issues come to light in the creepy town they're traveling to, where fighting pits are A Thing and the place sounds horrible in general.  

• I gather this translates into "didn't swear a vow of celibacy, is fine for her to get laid." Given that their religious order is based on a trait of birth rather than being super dedicated to religion, I suppose they might allow for people to do that under the circumstances. Also, it's a romance novel and doesn't strike me as being one of those romance novels where you're seducing someone away from their religious order.

Istvhan and Clara hit it off right away, as both of them are amiable large people and don't get to be around others like that very much. Clara...oh hell, I'll just spoil it since it comes up pretty quickly in the book: she and her entire order are lady werebears, which is A Thing That Happens where she's from, and that's why her order got kidnapped to be forced into fighting pits. Clara has some issues with being rejected for her beariness, which Istvhan doesn't mind at all. Much like the previous book (I think it's A Thing) for the author, they have issues of "But I'm a bear!" "But she's a nun!" and whatnot to drag it out some, but once they start badonkadonking, they're quite happy about it. The sex scenes are quite hot. The snark is similar yet different to the last book and I enjoyed it mightily.

This one also goes into far greater (and somewhat gorier) details about the Smooth Men, specifically as to how they came to be. I think this one sounds resolved by the end of the book, but since there's a third book, I'm not totally sure about that? It's super creepy but well done, I suppose, explaining all that weirdness magically. 

Quotes:

• "I go screaming berserk at the drop of a hat. You turn into a bear. Honestly, I'm a little relieved that I'm not the strangest one in the room any more." -Istvhan
• "I was just thinking, first you were with Beartongue and now you're chasing after someone with an actual bear's--" "Look, I'm just saying you have a type. A weirdly specific type." -Galen
• "I have made love. I have had sex. I have bedded, rutted, fucked, and on one occasion, with enthusiastic consent and a great deal of oil, I have sodomized, but I have never, not once, canoodled." -Istvhan, who clearly Has Standards
• "If I had just thrown myself on his cock like a sensible woman, this would be an amusing anecdote that happened afterwards." -Clara
• "Now. Before I lose my nerve or we're drowned in salamanders or somebody shows up wanting a fight." -Clara, learning from her mistakes.
• "Well, that's a load of horseshit if I ever heard one," said Sister Sigrid, and slapped him upside the head....If the two of you get any more in love, I'll puke on the floor right here." (I like her. Too bad she's not in it much.) 
• "Dear god, he'd told her he loved her and she'd said, "That's very nice." How was she supposed to live with that?" 

Four stars.

Meant To Be

By Emily Giffin.

This one is pretty obviously an alt-universe version of "What if JFK Jr. and Carolyn Bessette had lived and made it work?" and I'm cool with that. (I note that their RL relationship wasn't going terribly well at the time of their deaths) 

In this world, Joe Kingsley Jr. is the son of a famous dead astronaut and a rich, famous, possibly cursed family who grows up charming, handsome, charismatic, easy with the ladies, and his family pretty much assumes someday he'll go into politics. He's fine with that. He doesn't have enormous amounts of angst except for the dad thing. He has a female best friend, Berry (who is pretty clearly secretly in love with him and he's not), and Berry and his mom expect that someday he'll marry his blueblood college girlfriend Margaret and get on with the politics thing. But Joe isn't smitten enough with Margaret to be excited about proposing, which Margaret eventually realizes and politely dumps him over. Joe is, however, super smitten with Cate once he meets her, even if it takes a year for him to finally ask her out after the breakup with Margaret.

(I note this is a book that takes around 100-ish pages for the romance to take off, as we're busy finding out about their childhoods/teen years/early adulthoods first.)

Cate Cooper also lost her dad at age 3, but her mom married an abusive cop and life was hell enough that Cate became a model, dropped out of high school and moved out the second she turned 18. She's a self-made woman who relies upon herself and a few friends and otherwise doesn't let herself get attached to dudes, even when her childhood celebrity crush Joe finally makes a move. But they fall in love pretty quickly, feel meant to be, and it's awesome. Except for Cate feeling uncomfortable AF about her poor/abusive/uneducated background, especially since his mom and BFF kind of have problems with it. Joe defends her and tells them to get over it, but she still feels weird.

And then Cate finds out something else awful in her family, which as far as she thinks means she can't possibly marry into this politician family, it will shame Joe, etc. She starts slowly backing out of the relationship (and then having a dramatic ring fling in public), but Joe is still smitten and somehow convinces her to fly with him to a family wedding....and well, things come to a head is what I shall say there. (See above.)

Overall, I enjoyed this, even though it was a little slighter than I was expecting. It's somewhat of a slow start and I expected some more big drama than it was. Their relationship is quite pleasant and smitten-y and I really enjoyed how Joe backed her up to the hilt regarding her abusive stepdad situation. (God, what I wouldn't give for a dude to be able to back me up when I have family drama. That must be SO NICE.) Joe is almost a little too perfect except for his dumb teen years and screwaround dating periods, albeit he shapes up after meeting Cate. Cate is a bit too reserved, but you get why, and her letting Joe in to deal with her family stuff is very sweet. 

Overall I give it 3.5 stars. I enjoyed it, but it's a little bit not as memorable as I thought it was going to be somehow, more on the "pleasant" side, I guess. Maybe I just want more romantic drama in fiction and it's just me, though. 

Truth of the Divine

By Lindsay Ellis.

Previous book here.

This is a really, really, really dark book, and I'm not just referring to the "this book talks about suicide" warning at the start. 

Cora, our main character of the first book, has whopping cases of PTSD/depression/nightmares/panic attacks/anorexia, pretty much everything.  She's suicidally depressed after living through what she should not have lived through. The girl is a broken bird. She is in desperate need of an enormous level of help that probably can't be provided enough, given her "I'm an alien translator, more or less" situation. Her alien partner Ampersand tries and is certainly working on it at the start of the book (and that's very sweet), but everything derails when one of Ampersand's syphyles (...family members, more or less?....) lands on Earth, looking for the two of them to die together as last survivors, more or less. Also, this is because the ah...head alien group...has found out about humanity being the other species in the universe, they're coming here in five years, and they will basically wipe out humanity for being a threat. And someone Cora reasonably thought was gone from the world turns out not to be, so that's also traumatizing AF. 

Meanwhile, the Earthlings are debating whether or not to consider aliens "people" or go with a "Third Option" along the lines of oh, remember that whole 3/5 of a people thing during slavery? It's one of those things where you know the right thinking people will be all "hell no" to this, but the bad guys are going to get their way about it and all things will go to hell on Earth. When two of the aliens ask for asylum, who knows what'll happen with that, either. 

The second alien, originally dubbed "Enola Gay" in the media and later renamed Nikola, takes more of a center stage in this novel, along with Kaveh, a famous journalist who decides to befriend Nikola and Cora to find out the real truth. Kaveh has connected with Cora's shitty dad Nils in the past, but this isn't as big of a deal in this book as you might think. (Shitty dad stays in Germany, thank goodness.) 

Ampersand spends most of the book in some kind of "blue screen of death" state and frankly, isn't available to do much or help for a lot of it. And Cora's so freaking traumatized by everything that it's horrifying. Therefore, the budding adorable friendship between Nikola and Kaveh takes center stage. While it doesn't become a whole literal bond thing between the two, Nikola's calling Kaveh "dear clever creature" is darned cute and I really enjoyed them together, even if NIkola's not listening to Kaveh about "no, seriously, don't go down there and meet the people" goes extremely poorly. Kaveh becomes more of a narrator since frankly, Cora's not really in the shape to do it and reading her unrelieved in this book would probably be unbearable. 

I admit, I am probably confused a good chunk of the time as to what is going on with the aliens. They are extremely alien aliens and at times I just don't think I get what they have going on. That might just be me, I don't know, I'm not very technical. There's a fine line to walk between "REALLY ALIEN ALIENS" and having them humani-ish enough for the likes of me to get it, which is where this series goes.

That said, I really enjoyed the discussions of "personhood" in this, both in the "Third Option" sort of way and in the "how the amygdalines define a person" way, which is why Ampersand created the bond with Cora that he did. Very intriguing. 

Kaveh made the book for me. He makes this work, he is a positive light in this world (along with Nikola to some degree, who's balancing between "the Earthlings are doomed and yet I am very interested in this species, is there anything I can do about this?"). On the one hand, he's a bit unreally perfect in the "I happen to be a rich genius journalist and I'm handsome and well-meaning and my family is full of nice people who made me the confident guy I am today" way. On the other hand, he's a recovering alcoholic, his brother killed himself and it really messed him up, and he behaved in a manner that ended a relationship very badly. But Kaveh has been in the dark places and gotten himself out of it, which is something really needed in this book since Cora is so far down the hole.

Kaveh and Cora become boyfriend and girlfriend. This is a bit controversial for me given the age difference and power differential (she's 21 and traumatized, he's 35 and see above), BUT he is utterly supportive of her and caring and she NEEDS THAT since literally nobody else in her world is doing that for her AT ALL. I seriously wondered if it was ethical for them to get into a sexual relationship, even though as far as both Kaveh and I can tell, she definitely consented to such and even though Cora's a wreck, she seems to be into the relationship as much as she can be. Even Kaveh himself is deeply concerned and has doubts about whether or not this is a good idea, but plugs along anyway? They are also bonded in the "we are the only two people in the world who are close to aliens" sort of way, as well. Kaveh gets that on some emotional level, if not a sexual partner level, Cora loves Ampersand--and he can deal with that. Hooray!

Before I go further, let's have Kaveh's Quote Corner:

• "Welcome to Earth. I'm not going to punch you in the head."
• "Goddamn but this situation got more and more fucked-up every second. There was no right or wrong thing to do, no way to un-fuck this, only the path of least harm, and he could only hope that whatever he did from here on in fell on that path." 
• "I'm not particularly threatened by him. Like, there are some things about being human he is never going to get. Like, he's never going to understand why 'Dick in a Box' is funny."
• "If he is a part of the package that is you...then okay. I can roll with it. We're in uncharted territory. But that's kind of fun in its own right. I said I know you're in love with him, that doesn't mean you don't love me. I know you love me differently than you love him." 

...........

And then, the ending. The ending pretty much ruined everything for me. It's not quite the level of "aliens wipe out Earth" (YET, I'm sure that's where book 3 goes if there is a book 3) level of depressing, but a certain thing happened that bummed me out so much that I don't think I will be able to continue reading if there's a third book. On a not-terribly-related note, I am a huge fan of Seanan McGuire and have NOT been able to make myself read "Where The Drowned Girls Go" because literally everything about it sounds horrifying, depressing and sad--and that's about where this book I just read here ends. I don't think I can take experiencing more things going to hell after this. I'm really sad. I'm too sad to even spoiler space discuss this. Things end on a very dark and depressing place and I'm not sure if I want to know where it goes from there, sigh. Or if I can take that while living in the already-nightmare 2020's. That may just be me, though.

I read this interview with the author (note: while I'm not spoiling the ending, this interview does towards the bottom) and I note this quote:

Also, I wrote much of this book during COVID, which I guess is pretty obvious considering it’s just a bunch of people arguing over how to deal with this slow-moving disaster. I don’t want to write a narrative where the solution is hopeless. But the longer this goes on, it’s harder to make a case for any type of human cooperation. 

....Agreed. 

Three and a half stars. 

Caraval

By Stephanie Garber.

I'm not sure what is going on with this. 

Scarlett and (Donna)Tella are sisters with an abusive father, living on some kind of captive isle. Scarlett is obsessed with Caraval, some kind of magic show/game/thing her grandmother told her about it. She's written letters to the guy who runs it, Legend, asking that he come to her isle for years. But once she writes to tell him she's engaged (to some nameless count who writes nice letters), she finally gets an invite to Caraval, if she can just get herself to some other island. A suspiciously helpful "random" sailor named Julian helps the girls escape and then follows Scarlett into the game, for reasons of his own. The game turns out to be "find your sister 'cause Legend kidnapped her," and everything is mysterious and weird.

I can't say that things come out of nowhere in this one--I feel like things are set up in world and this stuff isn't out of the blue--but at the same time, things are confusing-ish, I suppose? Other players in the game don't really matter since the whole thing seems set up to deal with Scarlett's family drama. Weird, mysterious, magical things happen like having to literally die for a few days to get a dress (not worth it, I say). It's supposed to be all beautiful and mysterious and magical and mostly I was just "....I dunno, I feel as confused as Scarlett here." 

Scarlett's perennially vacillating between desperately trying to find her sister and developing the hots for Julian even though she doesn't want to. Julian's motives are god only knows what,  but he's hot and kind of helpful and Scarlett somehow trusts him anyway? They do give great hormones, though. Tella's not in the book much, but frankly she's kind of self-centered (even Scarlett thinks so) and probably not worth this much bother. However, I did enjoy a twist at the end regarding her that gave me much more respect for her character instead of always being a selfish bimbo-y girl. 

...I don't know. I wasn't quite in love with this one and wasn't sure if I was going to finish it? Maybe it's just a Not For Me But For Other People sort of thing. Three stars. 

Sense and Second-Degree Murder

By Tirzah Price.

Previous book in the same world here, though you really don't need to have read the first to get this one.

I LOVE the Dashwood sisters in this one. Elinor's a budding chemist. Marianne is a budding detective and helps her father in his detective business, and Margaret is a budding mystery novelist. Unfortunately everything goes to hell when their dad dies unexpectedly--presumably of poison--and their shitty brother John and SUPER SHITTY sister-in-law Fanny throw them out of their home and business. The girls investigate what happened to their father, which might have had something to do with the death of another budding female chemist. They also meet some eligible gentlemen: Edward Farrows (clearly the white sheep of the family, a secret sweetie), the overly-friendly Willoughby, and the standoffish-but-helpful Brandon (who is happily young enough in age in this for it not to be creepy). Lucy Steele hires the sisters to introduce her to "eligible gentlemen."

I love the Dashwoods in this! They are total feisty badasses! Even Elinor. I don't remember ever liking Margaret in other versions of this story, but she's great in this one (at one point she's all "I brought a smoke bomb!"). Elinor delightfully tells off her shitty brother and I was cheering. And then there's the smoking out of the murderer, which I won't quite spoil but I absolutely enjoyed the hell out of. Okay, I'll spoil it, but below the spoiler cut.

The only bad thing I have to say about this book is that at one point, someone vulnerable is clearly left alone for way too long with someone they should already pretty much suspect is a bad egg, and while everyone else is sorting out their whatevers, I wanted to yell, "Don't leave X alone with Y for so long!!!" I will note that my previous comments from the last book about "whoever's divey is probably whodunit" and "there's not that much romance but it's implied" still apply, but it didn't really bother me here? It's all very budding on the latter, and that's fine, and for me it wasn't so much whodunit so much as what-they-were-doing, I suppose. Not what I quite expected, but fit within the world.

Anyway, this is four and a half stars. VERY well done!

Tear Down The Throne

By Jennifer Estep.

Previous book here.

Loving this book. The plot of it sounds fairly simple and mostly revolves around Maeven's new scheme to force Leo and Gemma to get married by forcing him to go through "The Gauntlet", some kind of historical Unger* ritual thing. Gemma is conflicted AF between "I've had feelings for this guy since like age 12" and "Oh dear god, his mother and older brother are fucking eeeeeeeeevil murderers." Would you want to marry into the Morricones? Heck no. And of course there's a bunch of murder scheming going on with Milo and his fiancee and her secret boyfriend, and god only knows what Maeven's up to, but Gemma doesn't want to marry Leo if Maeven is in favor of it. That can't be good, right?

• Y'know what, I think the author needs to write some books on the Ungers, because man, do they ever have a weird/unusual/very forceful and stringent culture. Xenia needs a book/prequel, something, in particular. 

Anyway, this book has a lot of cool plot developments, moments of adorable, and hot sex. 

• I continue to love the use of the sentient liladorn plant. That's really cool.
• Gemma's dead mother was a time magier, and she ends up factoring into the plot in some really cool ways. 
• Gemma and Leo are ADORABLE, and the gifts section of the book in particular is full of "awwww."
• There is a baby strix named Violet who loves gargoyles at first sight AND IT'S THE CUTEST THING EVER I WANT ONE.
• Gemma and Maeven's "it's complicated" relationship continues to develop. Gemma can't bring herself to let Maeven die when the opportunity arises, and Maeven admits to having her own "it's complicated" relationship with Gemma's mom back in the day.
• I love the foreshadowing/past plot development setups in this one. 

It's hard for me not to spoiler this, because I love it so. I probably said more than I should, but screw it. Four and a half stars.