this was a great start to a scifi series, the characters were unique and interesting and I was hooked from the beginning. I look forward to more in the series and the author.

Sasha lives in a world ruled by corporations. Sasha is a freelance assassin. In order to make it easier to kill, she has had surgery to have her emotions removed. Unfortunately for her, the surgery is wearing off. This leads to her making mistakes as she wrestled with her emotions and she soon finds herself on the kill list.

Sasha decides to fight back. Now the corporations need to fear her and her friends, because she is not going down easily!

Fair warning, the violence in this book is very graphic. Also the author uses new words for things with no explanation. There is a glossary but the random words ruined the immersion in the story for me.

I received an arc of this book from the author/publisher via Netgalley. I wasn’t obligated to write a favorable review or any review at all.

This is a cyberpunk, world building novel - it is detailed and believable.

The main character, Sasha, is a skilled assassin about to buck the system. Every move she makes is dangerous and rule breaking.

Fast paced plot - I recommend this book for science fi fans.

Sasha lives on a man-made planet. Her world is controlled by mega-corporations. They control every aspect of life. If you want to have a baby, you have to get permission from the mega corporation you “work” for. If they don’t give it, you don’t dare to have a baby. Sasha is a freelance assassin. She had surgery to remove her emotions. It made it much easier for her to kill. She is working her way to getting the promotion “Killer of Distinction.” Will she get it? She discovers that she is next on the chopping block so she decides she will take care of not being killed. However, Sasha discovers that she gets an unexpected surprise from her teacher/mentor. Will she like it?

It’s a good cyberpunk science fiction novel. It’s a planet that has different rules and language. There is a glossary of the words so if you need a little help with those different words. It’s there. The novel has two chief characters and two entwined stories that make one fascinating novel to read. I enjoyed getting to know and seeing her planet through her eyes. I could see scenes clearly. I must admit that I wouldn’t want to live on a planet controlled by any size corporation.

I enjoyed reading this book apart from one big criticism, The author introduces new words for different items and it is not always apparent what it should actually mean. I found this quite jarring at times and it distracted me from the narrative. That being said I liked the premise of the book and feel the author has delivered a good story following Sasha and her emerging empathy which is not good for a career assassin. There is a lot of world detail and other characters to support the story too.

Full disclosure: I did not finish this book at 20% but as I do have some thoughts and feelings on this book I would like to share, I felt a review was appropriate.

I'll admit that going into this book I did have high expectations. On reading the premise, I was immediately intrigued. I couldn't wait to hear about how Sasha was going to handle her re-emerging empathy in a world where she is owned by corporations and it ended up being the second ARC in which I picked out from here.

Sadly though, there were several things which led to me deciding to DNF the book:

Writing inconsistencies: For me personally, this was one of the biggest down points. There are many elements of this book that differ from chapter to chapter and sometimes page to page. Whilst this may not bother some people, I found it really jarring and at times, it even broke my immersion.

The inconsistencies I would like to highlight are the following:

- Switching of perspectives from first person to third person and back in the same chapter. Whilst this is a writing style which can be used to great effect, here I feel that it breaks too much into the action and it is used too often, interrupting key points and throwing in information which made me have to reread previous parts just to understand what was happening.

An example of this is the chapter where we see Sasha do her job for the first time in the book. The action and thoughts of Sasha, written in the first person, is chopped up with history sections written in the third person. The execution however means that often is alternating from paragraph to paragraph, which led to what I felt were unnecessary breaks. I felt this could have been handled in a similar way to Chapter 2 which was purely on history.

- Structure: Chapter 2 is a good example of the issues I had with structure. There are some points within the chapter where new information is simply thrust at the reader with little context or in an order which doesn't make the most sense. An example of this is the mention of a planetary alliance which doesn't name the planets directly at that point, leading the reader to have to work out which planets are being referred to from information given later on in the chapter.

- Inconsistency in use of new terms and attaching meaning to them: From the first sentence, the reader are introduced to new terms, some terms with a clear explanation on them but other times there was either no explanation or an explanation later on in the story. Although most of the time, I could work out what was meant, I feel it would have worked better to explain all the terms to avoid the inconsistencies.

An example of this is the word Hund. There is only a brief description of a Hund the first time one is encountered but it doesn't really tell the reader much. On reading the glossary, this term means cow or steed but that wasn't the first thing I thought of due to Hund being the German word for dog.

- Inconsistent writing styles: At times it felt like the book was written by two separate authors. Some sections were descriptive, giving the reader details on history, politics and lore. But other sections, mainly those that involves character interactions, were more simply written and lacked the description. This is coupled with the basic character and location descriptions and the way characters were introduced suddenly with a name drop.

Another point which I did not particularly enjoy was:
- Sasha as the main character: I'm gathering that Sasha is probably meant to be unlikeable at the beginning, however for me, I wasn't nearly as interested in Sasha as I was the supporting cast. She was rather money obsessed, which whilst not something to avoid in books, was grating to the point that I grit my teeth when I read about an item she had because I knew what was coming next; her opinion on how expensive or cheap it was. She also seems to pale in contrast to some of the supporting characters.

Whilst this is a lot of criticism, I do feel that there are also some really positive things about the book which I did enjoy:

- The supporting cast: There is a wonderful mixture of characters in this book from those with humanity left within them (Sasha's room mate Jorge) to mercenaries for hire protecting people (Rafe and Micel) and two characters who really intrigued me (brother and sister duo Jonas and Jessi). These characters felt more relatable than Sasha did and held my interest more. There is also a particular part of the plot which I really wanted to know more about (which I won't share here due to being a spoiler).

- The history: The history for this series was a joy to read for me. It's clear the author has thought the history through and put a lot of heart and soul into it. The various planets introduced are described in terms of politics and culture. A bit of background is given within the sections I read which left me wanting more.

-The descriptive writing: In the sections where history is described, the writing style changes into a more detailed tale and there is much more variance in the words used to start sentences. It feels more like the reader is there in this world and I felt a deeper connection to the history and politics than other parts of the book.

Overall, based on the 20% I've read, I have decided to give the book two stars. However, I would still encourage other ARC readers to check this book out. The premise to me is still a fantastic one and I do not regret reading the part that I did read.