The Empress

I received this ARC from the publisher in exchange for an honest and voluntary review. I was in no way compensated for this review.

The Empress is the highly anticipated sequel to S.J. Kincaids The Diabolic and what a whirlwind of read that was! It has the same high stakes and fast paced plot that will leave your head spinning by the end! I was once again a little befuddled with some of the worldviews, the space, the politics, all that new vocabulary. But as I was expecting it this time, it wasnt as hard to get through.

Nemesis and Tyrus have their work cut out for them. Many of Tyrus subjects still oppose to having a Diabolic as an empress. Shes fights off numerous assassination attempts every week. The most pressing problem is their enemies and how relentless they are in their attempts to overthrow Tyrus reign. But Pasus has other plans in mind. Political intrigue takes over much of the plot in this one. Backstabbing and plotting are all over the place. Tyrus and Nemesis know they will need more help on their side if they ever hope to be rid of Pasus once and for all. So they leave to go find the Interdict and hope that he may grant Nemesis personhood in hopes of quelling the protests of a Diabolic married to the emperor.

Naturally, things dont go as planned. There was a lot more going on in this one than we saw in the previous book, at least I thought so. And this one is even shorter than its predecessor! Yet its jam packed with so many twists and turns! Seriously, I feel as if I might have readers whiplash! But in a weird way, it was kind of thrilling!

True, I suffered from bouts of confusion again. We get deeper into the politics in this one. I have never been a fan of politics in any scope, so you can imagine how trying it was for me to get through some of these moments. Then add in some time-warp traveling or whatnot and you can pretty much color me confused in some parts of this one. Despite all that though, I did still really like this one. Outside of the politics portion, you once again have these amazing characters that you watch grown and change and totally surprise you in so many ways!

This book had its surprises too! Though I wont get into that! But just know that the last quarter of the book or so was chock full of them! Every time I thought Kincaid had me shock, she would proceed to shock me further! It was unreal!

One thing I did notice that was missing was the romance between Tyrus and Nemesis. Dont get me wrong, its not totally gone. But with all the chaos that surrounds them, finding time for a romantic interlude was a lot harder than youd think! The stolen moments were sweet though. But I kind of missed them overall. It was like they hardly had time to be together together anymore. And yes, I meant the double phrase there! Spell check did not like that either!

I found that The Empress was a very character driven novel as was The Diabolic. While things may get overly complicated plot wise, I find I still love and hate these characters. I wont get into where they all fall under. But they are still very real, very complicated people.

Reading The Empress totally spun my head all around! I have no idea what to expect next! Just when I thought I had things figured out, Kincaid surprises me once again! If you were a fan at all of The Diabolic, I highly recommend continuing the story! The wait for the next book very well might be disastrous! Ill just let you think on that.

Overall Rating 3.5/5 starsagain with the minor takedown on rating. Still a GOOD read! Slightly better than good even! But all the politics and added time leaps kind of spun my head in the wrong direction. Not the good head spin Ill tell you. Still it was a most fascinating read and I look forward to the conclusion!

Author: S.J. Kincaid
Series: The Diabolic Book 2
Pages: 378
Genre: YA Dystopia / Sci Fi
Rating Out of 5 Stars: 2.5

Faith can inspire greatness, but it can be used to justify breathtaking cruelties.

There were bits I enjoyed. The visuals that you get are one of my favorite things about S.J. Kincaid’s writing. The fight scenes and political backstabbing were also very well handled.

Down side; there were far more times I wanted to reach into the story and smack heads together. I found some actions of our main cast to be far more over the top than they really needed to be. I understand that we’re in the transition of weak to strong, what makes us human, what doesn’t and vice versa going on. For me Empress comes across far too whiny to lead into what I’m sensing is the third books storyline.

Personally, I still think Diabolic stood strong enough to be left as a stand alone.

That being said, will I still pick up and read the third one if it comes out? Yes absolutely. I’m still interested to see how this wraps up and the great big F-You that Nemesis is going to dish out.

It’s been about several weeks since I finished this book and I still can’t process my thoughts. While the Diabolic was more a filler for me than anything, the second book completely blew my expectations off the roof. I was hooked the entire time and had so many emotions and thoughts running through my mind after I finished. There were so many unexpected scenes and things that occurred within this book, although I will admit that some of it is a bit predictable at times but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The character development in this book has been amazing and being able to follow Nemesis through her journey from start to wherever its headed has been an absolute pleasure. I’m super excited for the third book to come out and to see how this whole thing ends.

I’ve read some reviews that say this book is too political/doesn’t have enough romance???? But I thought the romance was plentiful & even deeper than in book 1. I was trembling with emotion. One of my all-time favorite series. Also Nemesis means the world to me.

OMG! I cannot wait until the next book! I am feeling every emotion Nemesis is feeling right now! Definately buy the first two books in the series. I stayed up until 3am to finish because it was that good! Read it in a day….You will not be disappointed.

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