I've branched out a bit to do self-published novels upon request and this was the first request I got. While Wattpad spent a week being down and being an idiot, I read this. Yes, other reviews are coming. This is just going up first cause this is what I finished first.

Title: Republic's Chosen

Author: Rori I.

Genre: Sci-Fi

Quick Summary: Draco had many Thoughts while reading.

Thoughts:

I received a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

If I had to sum this book up in one word and one word only, that word would be shallow, and it applies in a multitude of ways. The plot is shallow. Liana's and Marcus's relationship is shallow. The characters overall are shallow. I get more depth from a kiddie pool than I do from this book and it made me incredibly frustrated when I was attempting to read it. What made me more frustrated was what I was promised with this book, which I was then not handed.

I'll start with the writing, because it's the easiest to handle. On the whole, the writing is mediocre and oftentimes, unfortunately, sloppy. I am really curious who the author hired as an editor for this project, because it became very apparent to me early onward that Rori did not get zier money's worth. There are many awkward sentences, punctuation choices, and misspellings throughout the prose. At times, I would find myself reading a paragraph three times to figure out what it had said. This is a bad thing. There was nothing in the prose that particularly excited me. I can't pick a favorite line because honestly it was very hard to have one. In short, I walked away disappointed.

I don't know what the plot was honestly. What's written on the summary is not what I was handed. I understand Liana and Marcus were taken from their house and put into military training, and some training happens... but that's all I know. After they get to the base, it feels like a slice of life novel and considering the setting and the themes that are attempted to be addressed, this is... a bad thing. Not to mention there were many things skimmed over that would've been interesting to see [Liana's strategy battle with her teacher, for example] and I don't understand why they were skimmed over in place of transition scenes that only really served to bore me. Not to mention, each chapter change was jarring in its own right and it took me an impossibly long time to figure out how we got from one chapter into the next because the connections were often hard to draw. Not to mention overall the only consistent plot points were Li's sexual assault, Li's and Marcus's relationship issues, and some vague problem with Li's past and a secret identity that gets waved in reader's noses like an annoying older sibling with a toy and serves to only frustrate readers with how badly it's handled.

Inversely, there were some scenes that were covered that were done poorly. For example, in chapter five, Liana gets assaulted physically and sexually by people she's pissed off, and once the sexual assault happens, there's a great deal of distance between the narrative and the events. Not in a way that it feels proper, like if Liana dissociated. More than anything else, it very strongly feels like the author didn't want to write the scene [and zie could've avoided writing through the scene as a result] but did it anyway. And the fact it feels so distant is a bad thing. It perhaps would've been better to cut the scene short and pick back up with the aftermath.

Actually, let's talk about that arc, because I have many bones to pick with it as a whole. So chapter five, Liana gets molested. The chapter ends with her consulting a friend about what happened instead of her husband and plotting some sort of revenge. Chapter ends. Chapter six opens in a very different scene and the thoughts of Liana's assault are dropped until the end of the chapter, when said friend Liana had confided in tells a person in charge what happened despite Liana's several furious protests. And then after that, the person in charge, Liana's husband, and the friend all decide to "teach him a lesson" and make off to kill him, despite Liana's additional protests. To wrap this all up, the entire time, Liana is talked down to and not treated with respect at all. The way this entire arc is handled is downright disrespectful to sexual assault survivors [speaking as one] and in addition lacks the care that this sort of topic needs and, quite frankly, deserves. And, worse off, after chapter six, this arc disappears into the wind. It comes back briefly for chapter ten, there's mentioning of it in chapter... thirteen, I believe? But overall, this event had virtually no effect on Li as a character and her development. That's incredibly heartbreaking seeing such a traumatizing event get brushed to the sidelines like this.

The worldbuilding in this book is weak. Example, there is mention that gender roles in society has changed, and that they've been changed for a while, but the characters don't act like such fact is true. I would've liked to see this worldbuilding detail extended to the actual characters. By far, the biggest failing of the world building is the narrative suggests certain types of bigotry don't exist anymore, but then characters are put into situations which very clearly disagree with this. For a world that doesn't care about your gender, Li sure experiences a lot of sexism. In addition, for a story mostly set on a military base... it sure didn't feel like one. It felt more like a summer camp for... "adults". The details about historical events or how technology works or what it's made of gets put on readers in inorganic and boring ways and then just... dropped. "Here's this cool thing. You're probably never going to hear about it again."

Gee, I wonder where I heard that before...

I am not attached to half of these characters and the ones I can actually remember, I hate or feel almost nothing for. In fact, the only character I really had feelings about at all was Liana. And I hated her. Liana is an annoying, bratty, ignorant, and she acts like she's thirteen to top it all off. She's supposed to be in her mid-twenties. She mouths off to everyone. Everybody is always shocked when she fires off some "sassy" quip and she always gets away with it. Keep in mind, she mouths off to her superiors as well. I kept expecting someone to do something about her "flaw", but it rarely comes. When it does come, much like her being sexually assaulted it has virtually no bearing on her character and overall is just an opportunity for Li to have some sullen mouthy dialogue about how everyone around her is an idiot and she's in the right and some other nonsense.

Speaking of characters, Marcus's and Lianna's relationship. Where was it? The only time I felt any sort of romantic chemistry between them was when Heights gave them a keycard so they could sneak off [around chapter 13, I believe]. Even when Marcus was "killed" in a simulation [Chapter 14], Li felt emotion over it for all of a second. She felt more for the woman who had almost actually died in an earlier simulation than she had for her own husband. I understand the point of the novel is that their relationship is falling apart, but aside from the fact that I can hardly feel the chemistry is just the fact that I can't even buy that they're married in the first place. They fight with great frequency over the most asinine things. They have what appears to be very little in common. Lianna was incredibly reluctant to tell her own husband about her assault because she was scared over how he was going to react. This is a bad sign. Moreover, when they did fight, most of the time the narrative tried to paint it as being Marcus's fault, when the truth would be it was either both of theirs or Liana's. And yes, sometimes Marcus's as well. Example, when they have make-up sex, we skip ahead to afterwards and they have a conversation. In this conversation, Marcus is treated like the entire reason their relationship is souring and as such, the only person who needs to shape up and fix it. This is so incredibly false. They both did bad things to each other and were both the reason their relationship was falling apart. Don't get me wrong, Marcus had an abundance of shitty moments and loved to lord his artificial means of power over Liana and that's also bad. However, Liana is not innocent and the narrative tries to paint her like she is. This is incredibly dishonest and just paints her in an even worse light.

And finally, the icing on this cake, the representation.

I was handed this book told that the cast was rife with LGBTQ and POC characters, that they were strong and prominent and important roles. Except, when I opened the book, this isn't what I found. For starters, Liana is allegedly bisexual, but there are no statements made of any sort that suggest this. She's in a het-passing relationship and refuses to talk about her past. There's no indication she's ever dated women and nb people or even had an interest in them at all. This is the same case with the rest of the cast. The unfortunate truth is that readers will default to cishet and white when reading unless suggested otherwise, and there were barely suggestions otherwise. I can count three characters I can remember – and I can only remember the name of one of them – that were confirmed in the text as queer in some fashion and the sad part is they barely got screentime. Likewise with POC rep. There were hardly suggestions towards anyone's ethnicity [there was a throwaway line about Lianna's "Persian genetics"]. The thing about having representation is, if you're going to say it's there and actively promote your book as having it, it needs to actually be there. It doesn't count if you have tumblr moodboards about it. It doesn't count if you talk lots about your OCs outside of the narrative. None of that means anything unless it's there and evident in the text. The fact that I was handed this book and told it was "queer military sci-fi" is intellectually dishonest and I feel cheated.

In summation, I got to page 217 and debated calling it quits, pressed on, and actually quit on page 269. There is so much inherently wrong here that frankly I'm left feeling disappointed with the shallow resulted I was granted, as well as hurt by several of the elements in this prose.