I promise I don't hate things other people love. It's just a lot of big titles this year have been bummers for me. To be fair, I came into this one with open eyes. Red Queen, despite how excited I was for it, did not blow me away. It felt formulaic 
 The plotting in this often had me going, "wait, what? Why?" Most of the novel focuses on the gathering of other red's with silver abilities, an idea introduced at the end of the last book. But they were basically devices. The pacing was rough. The climax of this novel was mindboggeling. It was rushed. It was super, duper convenient deus ex machine style. I was a little bit angry with it actually. Oh so we've vaguely trained in the woods for a hundred pages and then that? Also, it was often unclear what exactly we were building toward. We were outside the world established in the first novel, and we needed to be introduced to this wider world. I was hoping it would be more fleshed out and less vague dystopia, but I felt way more connected to the first novel. 
 There is no cost to power in this novel. Let's just give a bunch of people superpowers that compliment each other and send them on a raid. It was like a less developed Six of Crows. On top of that the characters just feel so stock. Mare is exhausting. Maven is basically nonexistent as an antagonist for the entire novel except as the thing Mare is fighting in her head, though that feels forced too. Mare just feels forced all the way around. And there is nothing to make me sympathetic to her, certainly not the awful plotting. And poor Cal isn't given any damn character development this go-round. 
 Still, Aveyard writes well, though some turns of phrase feel overdone. Example? 
 If I am a sword, I am a sword made of glass, and I feel myself beginning to shatter. 
 Are these turns of phrase supposed to make me more sympathetic to Mare? Maybe we should develop some or this internal conflict through some more purposeful action. Aveyard is action oriented after all, and the novel moves fast enough that it is often easy to forget the plotting issues. It sometimes feels Aveyard really wants to be writing for the screen, not the page. Many parts feel like montages. While I sped through this book, much of it felt frustrating as hell, especially upon further reflection.