Title: Republic’s Chosen
Series: After the World Ends #1
Author: Rory I
Genre: Military Science Fiction
Trigger Warnings: According to the book: Background and secondary character death, bullying, discrimination (macro and microaggressions), in-combat violence and cruelty, institutional bigotry, mentions of PTSD, mild sexual content, sexual assault, spousal neglect. I add: Blood/gore.
Back Cover:
The world had never seen utopias until the Latin Republic was established. Equality, respect, humane treatment – all of those drive the society’s philosophy after the Great Disaster.
Yet humanity has not learned to leave war behind. When the Republic sends summons to Liana, she knows it’s illegal. Her immigrant status forbids her from fighting in the army, but the country’s leaders want control over her and they won’t stop at anything to get it.
Under the pressure of a tough training regime, threatened by a complicated political plot she must quickly untangle, it is no surprise Liana’s marriage begins to crumble. Tossed in a training campus and immediately involved in its intrigue, Liana needs allies quickly, but all she wants to do is crush the system which holds her hostage. With each passing day, it’s becoming harder to reconcile the need to hide her real identity and the desire to protect her immigrant countryfolk from harm.
An old friend returns to her life just in time to give her the leverage she needs. There is no chance she’s ever coming back to her peaceful life in hiding.
A strong bisexual lead, a secret identity, Special Forces soldiers, true friendship, and a headstrong trauma survivor trying to accept her role in saving the world.
Review:
I was really excited to read this book. I got a free ebook copy through the Sapphic Book Club, so it promised to be pretty gay, and the description sounded right up my alley. (The description I read also included something about Liana being former special forces and totally showing up everyone else in the army, which is a trope I love, but I can’t for the life of me find the description I read.)
Overall, Republic’s Chosen was good, but disappointing.
I liked Liana, to a point. She was skilled way above the basic training camp she was sent to, which I really enjoyed. She was also insubordinate and a troublemaker, which sometimes I enjoyed and sometimes seemed just too much. Mostly she was just stifled by the strict rules of the military – which I understand, but I didn’t like. (Also I don’t recall it mentioned anywhere on-page that she’s bi.)
Liana’s husband Marcus was most definitely not my favorite character. At the beginning, I thought he was a kind of a dick. By the time I got to the end, I wouldn’t necessarily call him a dick, but he definitely rubbed me the wrong way. I just couldn’t put my finger on why.
A lot of the minor/less major characters were really good, though. Most of them were queer (and it’s a common practice in this world to state your pronouns when you introduce yourself), and they all had little things that defined them, even though they often didn’t get a lot of page time.
I feel like the world could have been good if there’d been more of it. You don’t get a whole lot about this world, other than there is a big conflict between the Latin Republic (which I think encompassed the Americas?) and the Slavic … countries? I don’t know, that wasn’t very clear. And you get little details about things in the Latin Republic (unimportant stuff, like the women wear eye makeup under the eyes instead of on the lids) from Liana’s perspective, but you don’t get anything about how it came to be the Latin Republic, what the Great Disaster was, or even what the society’s philosophy is. The book was stuck on the military base, and that made it difficult to explore the world.
This book was just far too military for me. It was too focused on the training camp and the military exercises and the recruits and the rules and the hierarchy. I’m not a fan of the military industrial complex, and I expected there to be less obedience and submission to the military’s rules and regulations than there was. The structure and hierarchy felt like it was suffocating the story (which I suppose was intentional, since it was restricting to Liana, too).
I also didn’t like the married couple aspect of it. I don’t know why, and it’s completely a personal preference, but the conflict in Liana’s marriage in addition to everything else just didn’t fit for me. It felt like it added just another layer of complicated on a book that already had too much going on.
This was a long book – 400+ pages. And even with all that page time, it felt like there was too much happening. Liana and Marcus had conflicts with almost everyone, it seemed, as well as with the military structure in general. Then there was their marriage under strain from the being in the military thing. And everywhere they turn running up against restricting military regulations. And did I mention conflicts with almost everyone, including friends from their special forces days?
Okay, this review is a little disjointed and I’m trying to say a lot in a small space. I’m not completely sure what I’m trying to say, though. I did not like this book, but I can’t put my finger on exactly why. Military scifi is definitely not my thing, but there was just too much going on and I didn’t like the characters enough to actually enjoy this. If you like military scifi, though, you’ll probably enjoy this much more.
The After the World Ends series:
- Republic’s Chosen
- Blacklight (After the World Ends 1.5)
- Republic’s Reach (not yet released)
Bluejay Reads 