Lost by P.C. & Kristin Cast
The single star is for Other Kevin.
It doesn’t matter how good this book was (it wasn’t), they killed off my Other Aphrodite. Her and Stark are literally the only characters in these books that do anything for me since Heath died.
You will NEVER convince me in one million years that there is ANY universe where Aphrodite LaFont is NOT STRONG ENOUGH. I’m furious.
Onto an unbiased by my love for any universe Aphrodite review:
I liked Other Kevin, but why couldn’t he be more his own individual? Why did he have to be ‘that world’s Zoey’? Why did they have to have the exact same aura? The exact same tattoo? Their society is matriarchal, so it’s not like he’s going to truly be just like Zoey and turn High Priestess with Other Neferet gone. Why not give him more warrior centric powers/abilities that put the focus on combining brains and brawn rather than just being a killing machine or gender bend Zoey? I have so many thoughts in that regard but I’ll digress and move on to the villain.
WHY did it have to be Neferet? We’re like 16 books in at this point between the two series, not including novellas, and she’s STILL the villain????? Fuck me sideway, let’s get some new big bads in here! With this au narrative, it would have been so interesting to see Neferet as an ally. In this universe, she could have chosen healing over her hatred. She could have moved on from her past and chosen the service of the goddess and the peace that her decision would have brought her life. Instead, it’s literally a sanitised retelling of Marked, Betrayed, Chosen, Untamed, and Hunted all condensed down to one book with a gender bend twist. Boring.
I would have loved to see something along the lines of some power struggle with the People of Faith, truly turning them into villains for the narrative. In this universe, they actually DID kill those two professors and Zoey. Neferet teams up with newly marked and uniquely blessed Kevin to toe the balance between perception and what’s right. Maybe throw in the Sisters to show that religion isn’t the problem, bigotry is. Have Neferet and Kevin wrestle with the moral struggle of not wanting to kill humans but needing to stop the slaughter of vampyres. Add in a bit of personal struggle for Neferet as her past comes back to haunt her and she realizes she wasn’t truly as healed as she initially thought, and she turns to her goddess to maintain her path of light. Maybe even finding help and healing from a friendship with Other Sister Mary Angela. Just, fuck, give me literally anything other than Neferet sucks and we hate/pity her because she’s irredeemable.