Normally I do a plot summary to start reviews, but really
what’s the point? Lissa is awesome, faces absolutely no conflict or difficulty
and is now ruling an entire functioning planet by wont of her Sueishness.
Everything works out because it just does, there’s no conflict or complications
and Lissa is just totally awesome and super powerful all the time.
Oh dear gods it gets worse. It actually gets worse
See, Lissa, the worst person of in the universe, Supreme
Queen of Mary Sues is now in charge of an entire planet. She’s also, apparently
An Adult.
But this adult who is the supreme all powerful dictator
of a planet decides to run off and sulk every time things go wrong. Something
happens she doesn’t like? She leaves the planet or goes back in time and pouts
for a few weeks/months before coming back and deigning to rule her kingdom
again. And absolutely no-one calls her on this shit. This woman is supposed to
be, at least, well into her 40s. She behaves like a petulant teenager
Of course, everyone may be just happy to see her gone
because she is an utterly terrible ruler whose planet would collapse were it
not for the power of her Sueness and endless super powered lovers with god like
abilities.
Her planet has absolutely no resources. She’s literally
just moving a gazillion vampires and comesueli (proto-vampires which basically
act as a slave race but no-one talks about that) to a planet with no industry,
agriculture or industry but hey everything’s working out. And Lissa is
micromanaging EVERYTHING. Sports, culture, nascent industry. Everything. She
takes a day out of her schedule to help pick fruit with half her council for a
winery. A single winery. She has an entire planet to manage and she spends
pages concerned with this one winery run by one of her favourites because it’s
going to shore up a PLANET WIDE ECONOMY. They make decisions on the economy and
agriculture going forwards with no attempt to study what their planet or population
can actually do – just “hey, let’s do this” and lo, they do.
She literally has a little snit because tourists will be
coming to her capital and *gasp* photographing her palace. She seriously
decides the capital city of her new planet will be closed off except for
certain days when she can be out of the city and absolutely no-one questions
either the draconian nature of this or how unworkable it is.
She has another snit because her counsellors raise the
idea of tourism and gambling as a way to prop up her non-existent actual
economy. Why? Because she doesn’t want such debauchery and dirty
slutwhorejezebels on her planet!
So how does it not collapse? Because the author has
decided it won’t. The comseuli are all magically becoming pregnant because they
“somehow” know more of them will be needed. Oh and a sudden blood substitute has
been invented which is convenient for a vampire planet. And the Reth Alliance –
a kind of military and commercial union of several planets, has decided to
accept them despite them having no infrastructure, military or, well, anything
to offer at all (oh hey they may be able to produce wine and organic produce
which there is a convenient demand for but they’re going to fund an entire planet’s
economy on this?!) but hey join up they’re happy to have them.
Or the planet is HALF IN DARKNESS all the time which is super awesome for vampires but for some reason this doesn’t affect the temperature of the dark side or make it a frozen, pretty useless wasteland.
Of course a lot of this is helped by Lissa having the
most ridiculous Sue collection of super powers ever. Not only can she travel
through time and space and have infinite murder powers but she also has the
ability to tell if someone is good or bad with a thought. She doesn’t even have
to be in the presence of the person – she literally picks and chooses who is
good or bad based on their RESUMES. (oh, and queen of the world? Is literally
vetting every employee coming to her planet. Every last employee). This is such
pathetic lazy writing and has been throughout the series – Lissa knows who is
evil because she just DOES and she’s never wrong and then she has the stupidly
over the top godlike ability to kill everyone she wants
Worse – not only does she have this incredibly simplistic
ability to tell good from evil (because everything is totally that simple
guys!) but she’s willing to slaughter literally thousands if not millions of
people on that basis of this woo-woo sense. She will literally slaughter them
or leave them to die. But it’s ok if thousands of people are dying because
Lissa has declared them evil
In fact, let’s go with this brutal tyranny thing because
my gods, this is awful. Remember in the last book when she decided to condemn
entire species to become
slaves because EVIL? It’s confirmed here that there are 70,000 of these
people working in slavery and the only complaint is that they’re BAD at what
they do (because you’ve taken people used to mega future technology and tried
to turn them into 16th century farmers? Maybe? Did no-one recognise
why this would be a bad idea? No because aaaaargh!?). Oh and there’s now only
60,000 because there numbers have been whittled down and absolutely no-one
gives the slightest fuck about the genocide of 10,000 people through brutal
slave labour conditions?! But it’s ok because Lissa has declared them evil!
They eventually decide to round up these 60,000 “trouble
making” slaves and dump them on a completely wild planet with no shelter, food
or water – and no means or knowledge of how to make any (Lissa doesn’t bother
about this because they’ve ”had enough handed to them already”)
Even if you discount the mass slaughter and slavery, I’m
not kidding about Lissa micromanaging everything. There’s not even a pretence
of democracy or even reasoned decision making. She decides everything on a whim
and we get cringeworthy moments like them deciding what the age of consent
should be for the comsueli and they completely ignore what the comsueli themselves
say – because this entire underclass of servile followers has no rights or say
at all under Lissa’s dictatorship.
We have some brief diversions from her ruling to
basically have Lissa swoop into a situation (hey taking time off from ruling
again, don’t mind her and her nascent government) and fight in a war. Where she
uses her super powers to never ever be at risk and totally slaughters all the
enemy while everyone gathers round and declares how amazing and wonderful she
is and it has all the dramatic tension of a Teletubbies episode. She is
ridiculously power, ludicrously invulnerable, with masses of skills for no damn
reason other than the fact she’s Lissa so there is never any tension ever.
There is no loss, no risk, not issue – she has the power to literally
depopulate entire planets now. There’s not even any moral quandary about using
these powers. She just does and everything is pointless. These events don’t
exist for plot or tension – they exist just so everyone can gather round Lissa
and declare how amazing and awesome and special she is again and again and
again. It’s embarrassing.
At this stage every man who has ever spent 2 seconds in
Lissa’s company has now been resurrected into a new body (usually some alien
species with super awesome super powers) and become Lissa’s love interest.
Because this character cannot suffer even the slightest grief or loss because
MARYIEST OF MARY SUES. This has caused the whole cast list, as mentioned in the
last book review, to not only be ridiculously huge, but also ridiculously
growing and containing only a tiny percentage of female characters. If 10% of
the characters in this book are female, that is all. Look
at the list I put in the last review and just remember even more men have
been added and with even less characterisation.
And the women that are there either have vanishingly tiny
roles or are either. Like the two prostitutes who are stand ins for the evil
corrupting casinos coming to her prudish little planet – they try to kill her
because they’re totally jealous and evil. Therefore vindicating her hared of
the casinos because LISSA IS ALWAYS RIGHT. Or there’s Lissa’s mother, one of
the 60,000, who is an utter caricature of evil awfulness. Seriously it’s COMIC
how terrible this woman is. And when she goes on that military campaign to
prove how awesome she is? She rescues 3 women from being sexually abused and
has them trained as warriors – and one of them utterly hates her and is jealous
of her and all the men she has. Because of course she does. Men can be in awe
of Lissa and worship her. Women either disappear or hate her and are jealous.
Even the “nice” women on team Lissa get pregnant and then
have to spend the rest of the book apologising for the fact to Lissa who can’t
be pregnant because she’s a vampire (oh please, we all know in the next 3 books
she’s totally going to get a magical pregnancy) and can’t have a second of
happiness for these women and everything must centre Lissa at all times.
We have some minor POC who are aliens-but-Asian (in
feature and stereotype. Called things like “dragon” and “crane” I kid you not)
among Lissa’s vast stable of male lovers and there’s a gay couple who act as
personal servants in the brief miliseconds they appear (and these poor guys have
been resurrected to continue to serve Lissa)
I’m going to keep reading this series because I’m almost
in awe at the terribleness of them and Lissa in particular – considering the
terrible things I’ve read, this takes a special prize. I have actually read
fanfiction written by very small children with more nuanced take on good and
evil and a more moderately balanced powered protagonist than in this series.
