Ardent Violet and the Infinite Eye

Robotswithpersonality

Ardent Violet and the Infinite Eye | Alex White

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so-so

Emotional damage! Honestly if you want to get a flavour for what this book is going to do to you, just go to the two page author's note On Black Cats and Books at the back, you'll get a feel for the devastation.
There are still moments where what made the first book special to me reappears, but this is a second book in a trilogy? series? and while it ends one arc of conflict, it makes the book mostly about said conflict. 1/?

Robotswithpersonality 2/? I'm never well-suited for a novel so heavily focused on the cost and components of combat. There's spectacular world-building being done, a lot of potential in the alien races and alliances introduced even if the Coalition might not survive the current book's outcomes.
I just need a higher ratio of triumph or relief to heartbreak. Ardent and Gus made it out, but they're not together, and worse, Ardent thinks Gus is dead. Ardent and Gus made 3w

Robotswithpersonality 3/? but Greymalkin and Falchion didn't, not to mention both Jotunn AND Hjalmar. Considering the amount of character development given to the Mechas, I feel wronged as a reader having three of the four original team Mechas destroyed, even if it was complicated - their past actions and relationship with human conduits. And I guess I have some questions about what could possibly happen in the next book given there were already understood to be 3w

Robotswithpersonality 4/? negative health outcomes for Ardent and Gus as a result of becoming conduits, and the Mechas were their best shot at planetary defence. Will the next book finally be more from Nisha's perspective?
On the plus side, this series has strong non-binary, queer and now, chronic pain and disability rep, and at least one character opening up about trauma, I just wish I could say it was also a book where those characters were having a good time for (edited) 3w

Robotswithpersonality 5/5 more than moments I can count on one hand.
Will I read the next book whenever it comes out? Probably, in that now somewhat naive hope that there is a happy ending waiting for all those who have managed to survive to this point.
⚠️body horror, mention of statutory SA, suicide (edited) 3w

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