To give you an idea of how utterly abominable Riley St. Clair is as a main character, imagine the loud American tourist angrily shouting at the locals in a foreign country to speak American and you have an inkling of how infuriating this character is. To make it even more terrible, the book treats her most awful traits as if she is being badass instead of annoying.
Riley goes out of her way to antagonize people who could kill her without a second thought at every available opportunity. She is captured by aliens and forced to work in a mine but constantly assaults and berate them to a point where I feel bad for her alien slavers. It’s a good thing the book breaks logic to keep Riley from suffering any consequences for her actions.
There are two types of people in this book. People who love Riley and accept her abuse as part of her charm and the people who want to kill her to shut her up but the book goes out of its way to protect her. She talks back and beats on anyone who says something she doesn’t like and the book goes out of it’s way to protect her. Either everyone is too in love with Riley to ever hurt her or there simply not allowed to because nonsense. Speaking of nonsense, let’s talk about the alien slave operation.
Working for the alien slavers, they aren’t allowed to hurt her because she’s female and the female’s job is to service her male partner who actually works in the mine. The males have bomb collars around their neck that will explode killing them instantly but they figure that’s not enough to keep them in line. Females who aren’t forced to work and can abuse their masters with no consequences are there solely to service the male slaves sexually. So half the slaves on the mining operation are just there to service the other slaves, despite the males being under the constant threat of death from bombs around their neck.
Riley is somehow the first female the aliens have ever encountered to physically and verbally abuse her captors cause she’s so amazing. That’s not to mention the aliens let her keep her amazing bag of plot convenience, weapons, and outfits. Throughout the book, Riley is carrying a large suitcase filled with clothes, a tazer, and pepper spray that no one bothers to take away from her. This thing is used as a Deus ex Machina to save Riley’s ass so many times and it gets more ridiculous each and every time.
If you can deal with the book being so in love with it’s main character that it won’t let her face consequences by all means get this book, otherwise your credits are better spent elsewhere.