Echoes of Insurrection – T.A. White

Let’s dump on Kira. She has extraordinary powers, so let’s suppress them. She’s hard to find, so let’s plant a tracker in her body. She’s strong and agile, so let’s slow her down by continually dropping heavy objects on her - or vice versa. She’s starting to integrate with her family and House, so let’s dump on both. And let’s make it clear that there are traitors among them, so she and the other characters can spend the entire book wondering who is going to aim a dagger at whose back.

“Echoes of Insurrection” hardly advances the main story. At the start of the book her House comes under attack in a way that casts suspicion upon it. At the end of the book the true villains have been identified, but they are not villains who have been important to the overall story. So EoI is basically a side story. Since the situation in which Kira finds herself is not driven by overall plot logic, it is driven primarily by the author dumping on Kira, and relying upon plot armor to keep Kira safe. Some of what is dumped on Kira bears a remarkable resemblance to a safe or anvil suddenly appearing over the head of a cartoon character.

The series is still worth reading, but I need the next book in this series to develop the actual story.