Sooooo yeah... my opinion is simple. This book was neither amazing, nor terrible. Is the MC a selfish, can't make up her mind, pain in the tail? Why yes, yes she is! However she's also 17, and frankly I have yet to meet a 17 year old who isn't at least partially like that. I can cut her some slack for that; however she does make a terrible, TERRIBLE, heroine. The author made one fatal flaw, (solely my opinion), and that is she didn't have her MC commit to being a badass kick butt heroine, or commit to being the benevolent I will save everyone kind of heroine. Instead she makes her flit back and forth between the two. Therefore Mare comes across bi-polar, making her hard to relate to. You may find yourself screaming at her to wake the heck up and stop being so naively stupid. I swear I didn't hate it though haha. The world itself that the author created is fun. I like the premise, and I feel like the series has potential to be saved. There are a good many secondary characters to love. I'm a sucker for secondary characters, (Cisco on The Flash anyone). I developed a thing for Cal from the beginning. I had specific ideas about him and the author had me so confused on him. I found myself saying to the book, no that's not what is supposed to happen!! I think she was trying not to be predictable, exactly where I wanted her to be predictable. To be fair she was predictable, when I wanted her to be different as well. Can't please everyone lol. Also people just stop comparing it to Red Rising. It's not the same, I promise it's not. She didn't rip off the story, but like most Dystopian YA type novels it all kind of blends together without any stand out originality. Basically Red Queen is Hunger Games blended with Divergent, blended with X-Men. Doesn't mean it's bad, just means the genre has been flooded for the last decade and we all read A-LOT! So yeah I didn't hate it, and I'm going to continue with the series and see what happens.