Disclaimer: This is a review, and as such will contain opinions, spoilers and (often) general shit talking. (If you talk about what you don’t like about a work, you learn a lot. When you think through a work with the stakes presented to you by the creator, by the context of the work, you learn a lot. I review things, not because I love to dislike things, but because dislike contains rich and vital information for the process of experiencing something, but I cannot access it without interrogating it.) So, if you don’t want to have this thing spoiled for you, or don’t know how to behave when a person on the internet, that you don’t know, has opinions that don’t line up with yours, this review is not for you. It’s also not for the author/creator of the work. Please and thank you.
Okay, so first book I can tick off the recs I got from Reddit is Polaris Rising by Jessie Mihalik. This was recommended on a post where I asked for slow burns, but the definition of what counts as a slow burn is a sliding scale. Or maybe more like a ouija board where everyone is pulling it in a different direction based on how they felt about it.
Because I’ve also seen people call this instalove, which I have to disagree with. Instalust maybe. And the slow burn aspect is more of a medium burn.
But other than that it’s a fun read with lots of action, however…
The two main characters have both been on the run for years with bounties over their heads, yet in this one book they get captured and rescued time and again. The book even starts with the MMC already in captivity and the FMC joining him there.
The part where they suddenly become very bad at evading capture, after years of successfully avoiding it, felt like overkill.
There is plenty of action in the book, well-done action, but while the romance is part of the plot it kind of takes a backseat to the action and they actually interact outside of that, because in the end they’re sacrificing quite a lot for someone they barely know at all.
The characters feel kind of tropey and underdeveloped, more objects with their good looks and fit bods – the FMC being extra tall (and the MMC being even taller than her) is mentioned in the beginning but it didn’t show up in how either of them navigates the world at all and felt pointless – no ducking under doors or hitting their heads on things, poor posture from always stooping down etc.
The FMC is a royal on the run and I’m getting a little tired of how lazily this trope is used. In some instances while reading this book I was just annoyed at the poverty cosplay. I get it that it all has to do with the Houses – which was an interesting world to explore the political dynamics in – but she never really struggles with anything other than by choice because she always has her hidden money to fall back on.
Also the nepo babies cosplaying poverty is getting old in 2026.
I understand why this set-up is used (because it conveniently solves a lot of problems in a pinch + it’s the legacy we have of leading women in sci-fi from Princess Leia) but it’s often shallow, seeing only the rich side of things, rarely showing any kind of understanding of the reality of how the rest 99% live.
They had some good banter and moments in the romance, but I’ll be honest, I cringed through a lot of it (the sex also which was kind of mechanical) and the manufactured misunderstandings weren’t exciting. They just didn’t have that good of a chemistry beyond the ‘here is the lead and romantic interest of the story’.
The action scenes were good, the world-building complex enough to accommodate those nicely, but the dialogue in general was really stilted and I kept thinking “people don’t talk like that” – also a lot of characters end up sounding the same when the dialogue is this mechanical.
Again, more obvious sequel bait side-characters being set-up, so you can decide if you want to continue the series based on how much you like them in the first book. I’ve already kind of DNFd one series because I just didn’t care that much about the secondary characters (I tried my best okay?) so it remains to be seen if I’ll continue with this one.
I really do love a soldier/ex-mil character but Loch just felt like such a cardboard cutout of tall, dark and handsome it was a bit boring – and we didn’t even really get to dig into his MUCH MORE interesting backstory other than when he spilled his heart to Ada in lieu of a romantic gesture instead of doing some actual emotional work.
So, yeah, the action was fun, but the romance (which is what I usually miss in conventional sci-fi) was meh.
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One snake bite. One moment of clarity she really didn’t ask for. Sasha Barrett has survived two years at the Praetorian Academy — turns out her captain was always going to be the most dangerous thing in the field.
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