Metal Slinger by Rachel Schneider

TL;DR: Absolutely not. The ending destroyed what might have been an okay series.
Source: NetGalley, thank you so much!

Plot: Inconsistent. Both in pacing and ultimately in reason.
Characters: They weren’t bad till they truly were, though I believe them to be victims of poor writing.
Setting: This had a LOT of promise but was glazed over.
Fantasy: Sadly this is the same as the setting. A lot of promise but no love and attention.

Summary:

Even though she’s not one of them, Brynn has spent her life among the Alaha, training to be a guard and waiting for the chance to attend the annual market hosted by the Kenta–the very same people who exiled her adopted community to a life at sea. Going to the market is a rite of passage eagerly anticipated by all young guards, but Brynn does not anticipate breaking a century-long peace treaty while there. Nor does she plan for the intense encounter with an enemy soldier that now threatens to unwind the fragile coexistence between their people–and everything Brynn once believed about herself to be true.

Brynn’s loyalty to the Alaha is tested when the truth of her identity is brought to light by this soldier who’s taken an oath to bring her back to where she belongs. Narrowly escaping death on the violent high seas, Brynn’s connection to the Alaha is further tested when she learns about the world of magic she’s been denied. She was once certain of her fate and where she belonged, but the dark, knowing eyes of this stranger have her questioning everything, including her heart.

Thoughts:

I beg your FINEST pardon.

Truly. When did bad, inconsistent storytelling become ‘shocking plot twists’? When did an absolute lack of foreshadowing become a good thing in a story that needed to have it. We didn’t get an unreliable narrator, we got a badly written character.

Listen. There is only so much I can tolerate before I get real frustrated. This is probably a bit too far. There is promise here. This author has some promise. But she needed to be copy edited. She needed to have people read this and say ‘Hey, so, this doesn’t make a lick of sense’. You can’t have mind reading and then make a character do something completely bonkers without another picking up on it.

If I think too hard about the amount of gushing that went on over this book I honestly get frustrated. This felt like an insult to my intelligence, come on y’all. It made no sense. This isn’t even a review, because I am so annoyed and mad. No sense was available in this book. No one purchased any, grew any, or found any. No sense.