While I wasn’t the biggest fan of the predecessor of Mindstormer, I was pleasantly surprised by the beginning of this one. It really switched things up and kept you wondering what had happened. Lain having lost her memory sort of resets all her relationships back to when book one started, but since you know how she is “supposed to feel” towards certain characters, it really creates an interesting dynamic.

Unfortunately that was only the first part and then there is an entire flashback to the three months we missed. That’s when things sort of turned generic for me again and constantly kept reminding me of things I had read or seen before. I was also very frustrated with Lain and Steven’s behaviour during that time. I seriously started to think that Ian would become a valid option, simply because Lain and Steven didn’t interact with each other whatsoever. People change when they are thrown into extreme circumstances and it would not have been far fetched for me if they had simply grown apart, but apparently that wasn’t the master plan behind it. I just got so annoyed with their very opposite beliefs clashing, both of them being stubbornly idealistic in their own ways.

Something about this series just rubs me the wrong way. I am not sure I can really put a finger on it, but the portrayal of the countries and their relationship was odd to me (Like, can you imagine Canada building a wall to the US and then becoming one of the countries with the harshest internment camps on the planet?). In addition to that, I could not really agree with either form of suggested government and whenever Lain proposed a less violent approach, not even she could come up with concrete ideas on what they were actually supposed to do.

In the end, I was glad that the characters didn’t come out of this unscathed. Events like the ones they went through leave a mark and they’ll have to live with their actions forever. Ultimately, I liked it better than the first book, but it will never become one of my favourite series.