Book-Thirsty Thursday: The Empress, S.J. Kincaid

Despite its flaws, S.J. Kincaid’s The Empress is still very readable and compelling, and sets up quite the conclusion to this trilogy.

About a year ago, yours truly reviewed S.J. Kincaid’s The Diabolic from Simon & Schuster, and now, the company has kindly sent the sequel to this writer for a review, and, as it’s Thursday, it’s time for another installment of Book-Thirsty Thursday. Oddly enough, The Empress feels like it’s a response to some of the issues I had with the first book, and ends up feeling like an overcorrection at points while still being quite readable.

Here’s the gist of the story: Tyrus, now Galactic Emperor, and Nemesis, still a Diabolic, are in love, but politically speaking, there’s no way that the rest of society will let Nemesis become Empress. As a result of going on a journey, our lovebirds are separated, and then a lot — and we do mean a lot — of things happen.

In the positives, Kincaid has managed to solve a few mysteries about the world. There are several major reveals in the book about the nature of the Empire, and, with the explanations provided in-text, they still all manage to make sense and actually seem like big reveals. They pick up on things that appeared in the first book and push forward.

At the same time, though, Kincaid packs in twists and turns so fast that a reader might get metaphorical whiplash. While it works excellently in the sense that it practically forces you to keep reading just to make sense of things, it’s hard to say why it had the revelations had to come quick so quickly, one on top of the other. Then again, the reason for these changes all comes down to a major development for one of the main characters.

Without spoiling it too terribly much, The Empress manages to again defy standard YA conventions. As I said when I reviewed The Diabolic, there it was the sheer amount of violence — present in this book as well but to a different, less visceral degree — and here’s it’s the willingness to explore the downsides of those grand romances. It’s becoming more and more common in YA to do so, but here, thanks to Kincaid’s willingness to have some high stakes, it goes further and means more.

Does the twist of fate come off as slightly too contrived, although plausible in the universe of the story? Yes. It’s possible for one plot point to exist with both qualities, by the way, because The Empress does it.

At some point, one has to wonder if this second book and the implied third book were particularly necessary. When reviewing The Diabolic, I said it seemed like a standalone, and it would still work as a standalone. Is The Empress a fun read? Certainly. Is it one that definitely needed to exist, even though the first book came with some loose ends that weren’t necessarily tied up completely? That, I’m still wrestling with.

Next: 5 things learned from Harry Potter: A History of Magic

Regardless, whether or not Nemesis’ story needed to continue, The Empress makes for a fast-paced palate cleanser of a book.