Anarchy versus authoritarianism, in simplest terms. Neither side is presented in a terribly positive light. Reality having this extremely disagreeable habit of not being binary, I thought I'd like this book.

Not quite so much.

Ximena is far too impulsively sure she's Right, then remorseful when she's wrong, then back to impulsive action because she's Right...the cycle isn't going much of anywhere. No resolution makes recursion into repetition. That gets old fast. When it comes to the love interest, the cycle of assumption/acting on assumption/learning she was wrong should have consequences but it never does. It felt as though this character was impervious to learning. Kind of a drawback when you've set your story in a literal school. That it was basically a police academy, instilling authoritarian principles, was deeply unpleasant to me. You've encountered One Piece if you're interested in this story. That series of tales is 180° from this one in tone, in construction (One Piece hangs together), and society building.

Dante is described as handsome. In what way? Why is Ximena susceptible to his particular handsomeness? As it is, it seems as though Ximena is simply fixated on him, without reason or evidence we are able to see. His character, in the old-fashioned sense, is reprehensible. He lies and cheats to get what he wants...too much of that in the world already...and he spends zero time trying to engage with rule-loving Ximena for me to believe he sees her as any kind of person. She's just whatever he thinks she is, to him, and what kind of message is that to send to a YA-age girl?

So why did I bother to keep reading it? I'm a sucker for Hispanic-inspired cultures having grown up on or near La Frontera. I think the use of Spanish in the text is well done, coming at times that felt narratively natural. I enjoyed the school setting being presented as a positive even though I don't like or promote the authoritarian values it teaches.

The thing you should know about the author is, it seems she is in sympathy with the present US administration...thus explaining the positive presentation of authoritarianism...and, if huge amounts of gossip is to be believed, has regressive views about women's autonomy. I can't say I'd be all that surprised if I ever saw the evidence used to reach that conclusion. It *feels* like that would be her choice, from the manners and mannerisms given to different characters. I myownself have no direct evidence to support or refute the gossip.

I don't like the somewhat unsympathetic values asserted by the story, I have big issues showing the kind of "romance" that's in here to young women as a positive not a series of red flags, so I'm not recommending it. I'm also not angry I, an adult male, read it. If you're willing to see the positives I saw, or if you're culturally supportive of authoritarian stuff (what you're doing reading my reviews is beyond me in that case), it's okay. Please don't give it to an impressionable teen girl.

DNF - just can't support the author </3 which is disappointing because I was looking forward to this

This was pretty good for a debut written by a college student. The writing was tight, and the plotting well done. Ximena reminded me a lot of outsider heroines in other novels fighting for a place in the establishment — an establishment doing its utmost to keep women like them out. Ximena, like those other heroines (Blood Over Bright Haven's Sciona and Some Desperate Glory's Kyr, for example), is ambitious and determined to the exclusion of all other interests and people.

Ximena and this novel differ from those in a couple important ways. Like those other heroines, Ximena has drunk her society's Kool-Aid and fully believes its facade. Like those other heroines, she eventually realizes her society is corrupt and she rebels. Unlike those other novels, however, Ximena's reasoning for believing so deeply are not adequately explained, the rot at the empire's core never discussed in detail, and Ximena's about-face is sudden and unconvincing. Her loving parents aren't described as being meticulous law-followers themselves despite being pirate-hunters, so child Ximena's turning them over to the government when they turn pirate is very strange. Ximena's becoming a fanatic adherent to the law and aspiring pirate-hunter herself — especially when she has daily reminders in the form of her nemesis that the law is not objectively or consistently applied — is even more strange. We get a few mentions toward the end of the novel about the empire hoarding treasure and how its citizens outside the capital don't have enough to eat, but that's the extent of the revelations about the empire. In comparison, what makes Blood Over Bright Haven and Some Desperate Glory such compelling and believable reads is how society's layers are slowly peeled away, leaving the reader in a state of increasing horror and tension as the main characters deny reality as long as they can before finally being unable to do so any longer. Capitana instead read like it was written by someone who doesn't actually believe that hoarding wealth is all that bad, and who had a hard time thinking of what other evils an empire might get up to, but needed her heroine to rebel against something in order to have a plot.

The other main difference between Capitana and some similarly structured books is that Ximena's connections to other characters in the story never felt real or persuasive. There is no chemistry between her and the love interest, she exploits an archivist who's devoted to her in the belief that Ximena intends to follow through on her promise to partner with in the future, and her sister has been falling apart for years and at the beginning of the story is about to made homeless by their academy but all Ximena feels for her is impatience. Again, what makes similar books so compelling is that the love the main characters feel for another — Kyr's sister, Sciona's assistant — is ultimately stronger than the characters' ambitions, and seeing how their society has deeply betrayed their loved ones is what ultimately galvanizes them into accepting that their societies are corrupt. Capitana is a well-written, but ultimately heartless, story.

Finally — and this is a minor quibble compared to all of the above — this book is described as a romantasy but there are virtually no fantasy elements. It's set in a secondary world, and the characters think they glimpse sea monsters a few times, but that's the extent of it.

Hmm. I have some thoughts, though I should start with: Capitana was unfortunately not for me, and I DNF'd about 40% of the way through. The premise was interesting, but the part I read fell flat.

The first chapter throws us right into the action, starting with an execution. I was pumped. What a way to start a book. However, it immediately loses all of its momentum. That is the only action we see for the next quarter of the book. Of course, not every chapter needs to have nonstop action sequences, but when there is no action, I still need to feel interested enough in what's going on to be able to continue reading. That was simply not the case here. I was bored. Though I could tell the plot was moving, the snail's pace it took left me unimpressed.

I also felt no pull toward Ximena. I did not like her as a character. Now, I know that stories are about growth for the characters, so she wouldn't be the same person at the end of the story that she was in the beginning. Not all main characters are particularly likable at the beginning of their arcs. However, there's always something about them that the reader can grasp that humanizes them. Some aspect of their personality makes them relatable, despite their unlikability. I did not get that with Ximena, and I found myself unable to root for her.

The combination of a slow, uninteresting plot and an unlikable main character made for a book I did not want to continue reading. As I'm not in the habit of pushing through things I'm not enjoying, Capitana now rests in my pile of DNFs.

I received an advanced copy of Capitana from Netgalley and the publisher, and am leaving this review voluntarily.

4/5⭐️ Now I saw the reviews for this book but I still had it in my NetGalley shelf so I figured to read it and see how it is! I thought this was a solid pirate story! I love the way the author took this pirate story and kinda flipped it to where the daughter isn’t sure of her identity and who and where she came from! Great adventure and some good dialogue and who doesn’t love a pirate story! 😏

From reading other reviews it seems there was some controversy about the author! That didn’t deter me from reading and I want to give a solid review of the book not the author!

Overall, the book was a great pirate story to enjoy!

Wasnt for me. Just couldn't get into it. Thanks netgalley for the e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Really enjoyable read with vivid characters. I think the writing will improve as Cassandra James keeps writing novels, so I’m grading this on a curve. I love a good pirate story!

Ximena Reale is the daughter of pirates, and worse, they were once faithful pirate hunters who fell into piracy and eternal disgrace. She has spent the last several years trying to escape that reputation and become a pirate hunter herself, but the good kind who will never fall to the urges of piracy. She has fought through the academy for this, and when a legendary (and very dead) pirate comes back and kidnaps the queen, Ximena sees a chance to prove herself by taking down Gasparilla and saving the queen. At her side are the archivist Pia, who seems meek but it deadly smart, and Dante de Leon, a complicated, alcoholic classmate also competing to become a pirate hunter. Along the way, though, she begins to doubt her devotion to the law that has been her life.
Some of the worldbuilding was a bit anemic. We heard quite a bit from characters but don't see much that proves either view. Dante was really challenging to like, to the point that the first part of the book was almost hard to get through. The plot was a little cliché, but it worked okay. I did like the swashbuckling and the fast pace, though, and the really good twist.

After learning about the author's Zionist views, I will not be reading this book. Please, publishers, I'm begging you to not stay silent about current events, especially the imperial capitalist supported genocides in countries across the globe. That sort of behavior only enables the kind of government we now have in power in the united states. Do better.

Thank you so much to netgalley and the publisher for the arc of this one in exchange for an honest review!

Unfortunately, this book was not for me. I do feel like I’m not the intended audience for this one though. It was all around just too slow burn for me and I just couldn’t get into it.

I would also like to say that I find it sad that people are giving this one bad reviews because of the authors political views. That is not the reason for my rating.

I hope this one finds the right audience!

DNF two chapters into the book. I could not, for the life of me, find it in me to like the protagonist. Or any of the characters, to be completely honest. From what I read in other reviews, it sounds like stopping the pain in chapter two was a good choice because this book does not live up to anything the synopsis says, including and especially the romance. Not to mention that I also do not want to support this author in any way.

(Thank you to the publisher for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review. Any quotes are taken from an advanced copy and may be subject to change upon final publication.)

Okay but Capitana by Cassandra James? She nailed it. This is the kind of romantasy that grabs you by the collar and whispers, “We're not sleeping tonight.” Ximena is such a fierce, morally tangled disaster of a heroine, and watching her unravel everything she thought she knew while lowkey flirting (and sword-fighting) with Dante?? Chef’s kiss. The tension! The betrayal! The slow-burn chaos of realizing you might be the villain in someone else’s story! It gave me Daughter of the Pirate King vibes but with more emotional teeth, and the sea-swept world-building? So immersive I could practically taste the salt. Absolutely obsessed. If book two isn’t in my hands soon, I’m gonna mutiny.

There are a lot of issues with this book, so I’m going to start with the most actively problematic parts, and then move on to the weaknesses of the writing itself. To begin with, the disability rep in this book was handled horribly, basically just trotted out to make characters seem edgy or something, with no concern for how it actually impacts them in their day-to-day lives, and rife with ableist comments.

Ximena has only one eye, and we learn that her classmates cut it out a year or two ago to “humble” her. The love interest, Dante, flat-out calls her hideous for it. She makes weird little comments in the narration about “not having enough eyes” for everyone out to get her, or how she “may have only one good eye, but she was fully aware that [blah blah blah],” and Dante makes a cynical comment about how she should use the eye she has left. And yet, we see no impact on her life whatsoever–aside from occasional mentions of itchy scar tissue under her eye patch, she has no adverse effects from it. No comments about headaches, impacts to her field of vision, changes to her sword-fighting or academic work to accommodate the difference, and she somehow remains at the top of her class in all of her subjects. In fact, there isn’t even anything about the teachers at her academy punishing the students who did this to her. And while it’s true that people who lose an eye can often eventually regain most of their full visual field as their brain and remaining eye adjust, this adjustment takes time; she wouldn’t just improve overnight. (Also, it drove me crazy how many times she referred to her “good eye” in the text. This makes no sense, because it’s not like she has one eye that works and another “bad eye” that doesn’t work–she literally does not have another eye.)

Dante is a similarly problematic type of disability rep. He is very fond of alcohol and refers to himself as having a “drinking problem.” But…this isn’t really framed as a problem? We see a few instances of him losing inhibitions while inebriated, and making some people mad with his gambling and partying habits, but nothing that really makes it look concerning. If anything, it’s played up as part of his party-hard-tormented-bad-boy persona, which of course is meant to make him appealing to readers. And, during a time where the captain punishes him by denying him food for a few days (I would assume this also includes alcohol), he shows no adverse effects, withdrawal, cravings, or other signs of actually having an addiction. It’s another case of slapping on a superficial disability without consideration of how it affects the person, or in this case, without even really painting it as a problem???

And then there’s Pia, the archivist. To me, Pia reads very strongly as autistic-coded. She is shown to be rigid and sometimes awkward in her speech and her movements, has a fixation on (and uncanny memory for) numbers, is bad at reading social cues, and often gets so carried away on topics of interest that people have to tell her to stop talking. She doesn’t have many friends besides Ximena, who constantly just comments on how “strange” Pia is, with no sense of sympathy. It sometimes felt like the biggest reason to include Pia as a character was so she could be mocked for her personality (and her appearance, as she is the only canonically fat character and a joke is made about her eating tons of empanadas and drinking tons of hot chocolate). Even when Ximena has a sort-of change of heart, she still describes Pia as strange.

While we are on the subject of poor representation, there are some VERY sketchy, racist-feeling vibes in the text as well. Though it’s true that most of the cast is Latine, there are hints of anti-Black sentiment throughout the book. The only two Black characters in the whole book are (a) the right-hand man of the evil pirate/main antagonist, who is described as follows: “his skin was as dark as gunpowder, and his hair, dyed a brilliant red, hung in thick locs down his back”, and (b) a scavenger boy who leads a crew of similar scavenging teens referred to as “rats” by others, described as such: “His clothes were rags, his hair was dreadlocked, and his skin was brown as leather from the sun, but he gazed at them with an air of command, as if he were a prince over his small tribe of sea rats.” In other words, both Black characters are antagonists, or antagonist-adjacent, and portrayed in a very negative light (one a murderer, the other a poor scavenger, and both with stereotypical locs, one of which is referred to the now-disfavored-due-to-racist-origins term “dreadlocks”). Even to the extent that the former might be construed as positive (given how the narrative changes allegiances later changes in the book), he is still a man who has openly admitted to killing lots of people, and is also described in weirdly racist terms. “Dark as gunpowder”? Really?

Even the use of Spanish language and culture throughout the text was done in a way that did not feel organic and felt more like playing cultural dress-up (yes, the author is Latina, and I’m not questioning the authenticity, but rather the way in which it is written stylistically). Characters sometimes repeat themselves in Spanish and English in dialogue–for instance, a character says, “Ah, claro que sí, of course.” Claro que sí literally means “of course.” It doesn’t make sense for a character to be switching languages this way when presumably everyone around them speaks the same languages (since the whole world is clearly influenced by Latin American culture and language).

But let’s say you don’t care about problematic representation. Is the story at least entertaining and well-written? Alas, no.

To begin with, these characters low-key suck and also make no sense. There are so many places in this book where characters talk about how smart Ximena is, how she’s the brightest cadet at the academy, and how she has a “perfect memory.” Yet, despite this, she is so. painfully. STUPID. You really mean to tell me that the smartest girl in school just somehow had never heard, in all her reading and obsessive studying, that the empire she idolizes has been accused of war crimes? Or that she doesn’t recognize her own sister’s voice at a pivotal moment? Or that she fails to recognize that something is very obviously wrong when a suspicious magical woman starts going on a long monologue that sounds suspiciously similar to a story she just heard a few hours earlier? I’m not against characters being less-than-brilliant, but if you’re telling me this character is so much smarter than everyone around her, you need to make her actions reflect that intelligence, too. Similarly, though we are told multiple times that she has a “perfect memory”–which seems to extend to both visual and auditory recall, and includes remembering “every detail” of events from years ago–we also see her forget a symbol someone drew immediately because it’s wiped away “before she could commit the details to memory.” Is it too much to ask for a crumb of consistency with a character’s unique abilities? Beyond that, Ximena is often critical of the appearance of other women, whether she’s commenting on how other characters should learn to use whale oil to slick back their hair, describing Pia as “squat and round-cheeked” and comparing her to a goldfish, or criticizing her sister for wearing makeup. Hello, 2010? You can have your “not like other girls” character back. And to top it all off, her character is painfully static for about 90% of the book, never showing even the slightest hint of remorse, and then does a super abrupt 180-degree turn right before the end. It didn’t feel like an organic shift or a gradual evolution; it felt like the author just got to the end and realized she needed to make those changes and hadn’t laid the proper groundwork for them, so she just gave up and added a heavy-handed twist.

Dante, believe it or not, is even worse. From the beginning, we see he doesn’t have great hygiene–he eats fried plantains out of his hands, and two different paragraphs describe both how this drips grease on his pants and how he wipes his greasy hands on his doublet. So, you know, kind of gross. He’s also like a weird amalgamation of the two most common types of YA love interests: he is a tall, dark, and traumatized Broody Boy, but because he dyes his hair silver-blond and his mother is in a position of national power, he’s also the blond-haired golden boy who everyone loves. In terms of personality, he’s also kind of a mess (but, admittedly, a smidgen more interesting than Ximena). He asks invasive, personal questions of Ximena, including about her lost eye, when she barely knows him–and, as alluded to above, he replies to her explanation of what happened to her eye as follows: “And I thought having the high minister for a mother was terrible. But I only have to be miserable. You have to be miserable and hideous at the same time.” You cannot convince me that this is a healthy dynamic to begin with. He alternates between being downright cruel to Ximena (insulting her, trying to frame her for mutiny, the usual) and then randomly dropping large amounts of affection on her (a spontaneous kiss, asking if it would be enough if he told her he loved her–and then not saying it, a love letter). Again, not a healthy dynamic. And he is also very not-subtle in his pro-pirate views, which also makes me question how much of his interest in Ximena is genuine interest in her and how much is rooted in his weird fascination with everything her parents stood for.

Moving on, the worldbuilding makes similarly little sense. Should I begin with the academy, which trains students for a navy that has only 150 ships in its fleet, and yet allows the students to train using actual munitions and cannonballs on real warships in training exercises, to the point that one ship starts taking on water during a scrimmage? Effective use of resources? Never heard of her. Or maybe I should talk about the incredibly flimsy ties between the pirates and the general public? Somehow, the people view Gasparilla and pirates as heroic, as we see multiple peasants who chant in his favor. But we also have scenes and descriptions of pirates killing innocent people while plundering the empire, or damaging people’s homes. Even if they have some sort of Robin Hood-like heroic mythos, the fact remains that they also hurt innocents, including the poor who still view them as the empire’s possible salvation. And speaking of the empire, though the story does sketch loosely the image of some sort of war going on in the Northern Archipelago and it’s implied that this is a futile war that the empire is engaged in, it took until well past the halfway mark for it to become clear whether this war was the empire trying to annex new territory or trying to put down a rebellion in existing territory–which is a huge difference. Finally (light spoiler), Gasparilla has a little enclave of his supporters who apparently have formed some sort of happy, lively democracy–but we see no indication of that democratic society having a government, or rules, or an economy. I don’t love the idea of including a utopian alternate society, and pitching your book as having commentary on imperialism, if you haven’t developed what makes this democratic world able to function better than the evil empire.

And the plot–or, perhaps more accurately, I should say “the string of random coincidences that defy plausibility.” This is perhaps best illustrated by a scene where Ximena, Dante, and Pia have been kidnapped and are just starting to try and make a break for success, when a sea creature with venomous barbs comes out of the ocean and starts attacking the ship. The venom is flying, crew members are being impaled and dying, and yet, somehow, nobody in Ximena’s group gets hit. Then, just as Ximena has been cornered by the captain that kidnapped them–surprise!–another barb comes, pierces the captain through the chest and kills her, saving Ximena’s life. Sorry, but that’s just ridiculous. There are multiple instances of Ximena going through situations that should spell game-over for her–shipwrecks, storms, attacks from more competent swordspeople, and so on–but she just keeps getting lucky. And when she supposedly comes to a “brilliant” conclusion–that a pirate who goes missing around the same time every year for a few months could only be doing so if he had children he was visiting during that time, and therefore this pirate must have kids they can blackmail him about–nobody questions other possible interpretations (seasonal health issue that gets worse in the winter? secret lover? a second boss he’s reporting to?) and instead just assumes, yes, this heteronormative happy family answer must be it. And, of course, this odd guess is actually correct.

This gets into the last general bucket of complaints I have, which is that the author’s right-wing politics are baked pretty clearly into the DNA of this world. Aside from the ableism, racism, and weird ideas on nuclear families/children, this is an aggressively straight book, with nary a queer character to be seen, even in passing (and, let me tell you, two adult male characters are set up in a way that would have made for an excellent past-gay-romance subplot–truly a missed opportunity). In a childhood fairytale Ximena repeats, it’s presented as a normal idea that, when a woman beats a man in a duel, he must propose to her afterward. And while child-Ximena said this seemed silly to her, the adults frame this as her simply being a child who doesn’t understand that “sometimes we need people in ways we don’t expect.” Which feels like kind of a stretch, to say that a woman must marry a man she’s never spoken to because she’s going to “need” him, but whatever. (In a smaller conservative point, one of the things Ximena hears that makes her think Gasparilla’s little society is very lively and happy, in addition to the sound of a guitar, is the sound of a gunshot. Ha.)

Finally, a few small nitpicky things that drove me bonkers but don’t fit into any of these buckets:

- Ximena clearly idolizes the admiral of the Cazadores, but this idolization is written in a way that makes it almost sound like she has a crush on him?? This man is in his thirties with graying hair, and she’s a teenager, yet she describes him in one scene like this: “But the longer he held her, the more the tension in her body unraveled, until her stiffened spine relaxed, and she found herself hugging him back. The admiral was here. She didn’t have to fight off the evils of this world alone. Gabriel Perez had searched the seas to find her; he’d battled calveras and pirates to come to her rescue. Marquesa and her parents had failed her time and time again. But the admiral never had. That was the truth his arms around her promised: he would always fight for her. Always.”
- I’m convinced Cassandra James doesn’t understand how swimming works. She has characters swimming in the open ocean in full clothes and boots, somehow not being dragged under by the weight of their attire, and able to tread water, hug (while vertical), and even carry the weight of another person while swimming for hours, fully dressed. She also wrote a scene where Ximena chokes on water in a storm, loses consciousness, seemingly drowns, but then floats back up to the surface afterward. Except, if all the air left her lungs and she sank below the surface, she wouldn’t float back up–people aren’t naturally that buoyant once their air runs out.
- The whole plot of the book (per the official summary and the inciting incident–which happens around 150 pages in) is supposed to be around the attempt to rescue the queen who was kidnapped by Gasparilla, but then the plot just kind of turns into “we need to find Gasparilla” and the queen is all but forgotten.

All told, there isn’t much of anything in this book that I would willingly recommend to anyone–and, if you know anything about me, you know that I rarely go so far as to say that about a book. Consider this review a gift: I read this book so that you don’t have to.

Pirate stories? I never really knew them—until now. After reading this book, color me intrigued. It’s a YA fantasy with a strong, compelling female protagonist leading the charge. And what’s a badass FMC without a snappy, grumpy rival/MMC to keep things interesting?

The book is fast-paced, action-packed, and kicks off a duology that promises more. I’m giving it 3.5 stars, rounded up to 4.

As for any controversy surrounding the author, I’m not familiar with it—this review is based purely on the work itself.

I enjoyed this light hearted read! It was fun and there was some action. I wish it picked up a few more times in certain moments. Sometimes the emotions plateau in some parts of the book, or it got slow. I really did enjoy the creative storytelling, though!

Ximena wants to be more than her legacy as the daughter of pirates and traitors. She’s worked hard to be perfect and with the elevated title of Cazador within her grasp. And thanks to Gasparilla’s daring, she might actually have a change at that coveted cloak. All she has to do is set out on one of the most dangerous quests that even the bravest of Cazadors avoid and not let her forever rival, Dante, get the best of her. The nonstop determination to succeed drives Ximena in such a way that it is easy to relate to and worry about will the next move be the last. An enjoyable tale of a young woman forging her path and needing more than just her wits and bravado to outwit pirates and captains alike.

Capitana is, at its heart, a pirate story, as should be obvious by the cover. However, if one reads a little deeper, it is about discovering the rot at the center of your society and rebelling against it, of discovering that every rebel around you was right all along, despite your personal dedication to the current regime. There's nothing wrong with that as a theme, but the reversal of Ximena, the main character, was - despite the amount of foretelling - rather too abrupt and out of character to be believable, and at the same time, the reversal was presaged rather farther in advance than the author likely intended; it was not the surprise it was supposed to be. Capitana is not a bad book, but it would benefit from another round of editing.

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book provided by Netgalley. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Capitana tells the story of Ximena Reale, who wants nothing more than to earn the title of cazadora. She has recently reached the rank of cuatreda in record time. Her parents betrayed the empire by becoming pirates. She is constantly reminded of her roots and she carries herself with the mindset that she always has something to prove. At the same time, Ximena is researching a pirate named Gasparilla, often thought to be a folk tale. Ximena is convinced he is very real and will plans to return soon. When the empire is attacked, Ximena vows to save it. There are themes of duty, nepotism, activism and revolution. This novel explores different perspectives of a conflict. Ultimately, Ximena must make a definitive choice about who's cause is just. This was a pretty fun YA pirate story.

Thank you to NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for my honest opinions.

OK, so I got this book after I had heard some pretty bad things about the author. However, I wanted to try to give it a shot.

I tried having an open mind, but I could not get into this book. I disliked the FMC so fiercely and could not even get into the book because I couldn’t connect with her.

I struggled through this entire thing. Maybe it just wasn’t for me. I’m sure there’s an audience for it out there, but I wasn’t it.

Thank you NetGalley for an early ebook copy.

I think the precedent and idea for the book was great. But the very strict rule binding of the main character made it very hard to get into the story. I don’t see how the sister goes from one personality to another. It was such a dramatic change with no character development. It sounds like there will be a sequel based off the epilogue. I could listen the sequel but do not think I could sit down and read it. I personally did not understand Dante’s choices in the end. I felt like the story was too detailed in the rules but not enough in the story itself.