CBR18 Book 45: "Witch Season" by Julia Bianco

Page count: 320 pages

Rating: 4 stars

CBR18 Bingo: Refuge (The Aestas coven works hard to be a safe haven and refuge for young witches who have snapped and would normally be ostracised by other witches) 

Thank you to St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for this ARC. This book is on sale now. 

There are two types of witches (in this world, all magic users are called witches, regardless of gender). The ones who are born from families with established magic, who grew up as part of a coven, and who are therefore guided and helped through the process of manifesting their magic, and then there are "unsettled" witches, who manifest their magic in their late adolescence or early teens in an explosive "snap", usually in a stressful situation or when they lose their temper about something. These snaps can cause immense injury and even death, and tend to be very traumatic for the young witch in question. 

Katherine Barnes, who is now the enforcer for the Aestas coven in Los Angeles, was one such witch, and when she snapped as a teenager, she collapsed an entire wing of her high school, leading to three deaths and countless injuries. Katherine ran from her home, abandoning her family, and ended up helpless and desperate in Los Angeles, where Sylvia, the leader of Aestas, found her and helped her through the very turbulent first years until Katherine's magic settled. Now she has a new name, a magically altered appearance and lives in constant fear and guilt about her past catching up to her. 

Katherine is trying to figure out who is manufacturing and selling magical drugs to regular humans. She's also trying to help a newly unsettled teenage girl named Lily come to terms with her recent snap. On top of everything, Aestas is expecting its annual "audit" from Noctis, the most powerful coven of the United States. Sylvia, Katherine's boss and mentor, is on edge and stressed. She's noticed her own powers fading and is having trouble keeping up with her responsibilities as coven leader. She fears that Silas Khatri, heir to the Noctis coven, is there to replace her (she's not entirely wrong - his parents have sent him to find faults with Sylvia's leadership so he can replace her, but he really doesn't want to take over the coven) and becomes desperate to find a solution that will allow her to retain control.

It's been quite a while since I read any new paranormal/urban fantasy, but this was a very promising start to what seems to be a new series. Katherine, our protagonist, lost her biological family when she snapped and has managed to find a new family among the Aestas coven. She takes her job enforcing the coven's rules very seriously, but her loyalty and sense of gratitude towards Sylvia also make her willing to overlook a lot of very questionable behaviour, which she would clearly not have tolerated from anyone else. 

On the surface of things, Silas Khatri might seem like the antagonist. He's rich, handsome, comes from what basically amounts to witch royalty, and there is clearly bad blood between his parents and Sylvia because of things that went down when Sylvia first discovered her own magic powers (she never snapped, despite coming from a non-magical family). However, Silas has no wish to be the heir to the Noctis coven; he just wants to live a quiet life and teach magically adept teenagers. He has no desire to snoop into the daily workings of the Aestas coven and replace Sylvia as leader. He is immediately attracted to Katherine, but also understands why she is so distrustful of him. She doesn't realise that he is a much harsher critic of himself than she can ever be. 

After there is a massive explosion in a shopping centre in Los Angeles, Katherine and Silas have to work together to figure out whether it was caused by rogue magic or something else. This proves to be a dangerous job, since someone is trying to murder Silas, and Katherine is caught in the crossfire. 

This first book establishes some of the world-building of the series, and the plot developments leave both of our central characters, Katherine and Silas, in new and difficult positions by the end of the book. I'm excited to see how Ms. Bianco further develops the series. 

CBR18 Book 37: "Let's Make a Scene" by Laura Wood

Page count: 352 pages

Rating: 5 stars

Cynthie Taylor needs some positive publicity, fast. Once it was revealed that not only was the film director she recently broke up with married, but his wife is pregnant, former good girl Cynthie is now seen as a manipulative home wrecker (the cheating director is obviously not getting the same negative press, what with being a man and all).

Fired from a high-profile superhero movie, Cynthie may have found a new and unexpected career rescue. The writer and director of Cynthie's first-ever movie, A Lady of Quality, the one who made her a breakout star, wants to make a sequel, as in the thirteen years since it was made, it has become a cult classic on streaming, and now the funding is in place to make a follow-up. Most of the original team will be in place to make it, and filming in the UK will take Cynthie away from the most aggressive press attention. It would also mean working closely with Jack Turner-Jones again, a man Cynthie has a complicated past with. 

Thirteen years ago, Cynthie was a relatively unknown actress selected for her role in A Lady of Quality in a series of auditions. Jack Turner-Jones was the son of two acclaimed and beloved British actors, who had very high career expectations for him. He's worried she's going to ruin the whole movie with her stage fright and inexperience. Cynthie overhears him complaining to one of the directors that he wants her fired, and finds his arrogance infuriating. They start off on the wrong foot and keep getting more antagonistic as the shoot progresses. The studio execs, however, want Cynthie and Jack to pretend to be a couple to drum up publicity for the movie. So while they privately loathe each other, they not only have to pretend to fall in love in the movie they're filming, but off-screen as well. 

Now Cynthie's PR people think it would be very beneficial for her reputation if she rekindled this fake romance with Jack, which will also create advance publicity and excitement for A Lady of Quality 2. Jack Turner-Jones is up for contract negotiations for the next season of Blood/Lust, and wants to make sure his character isn't killed off. Fake dating Cynthie will raise his media profile considerably. Since the world already thinks they used to love each other back in the day, selling the relationship now should be easier. There is the added complication that the streaming service that's funding the movie wants there to be a behind-the-scenes documentary accompanying the release, so Cynthie and Jack would have to pretend to be affectionate a lot more of the time.   

Career-wise, Cynthie is now basically where Jack once hoped he would end up. She's starred in a number of prestigious films, been Oscar-nominated, won several other major acting awards, and until she was unfortunate enough to get romantically involved with a man who chose not to divulge that he was married, she was box office gold. Jack, on the other hand, is a constant disappointment to his exacting parents, being perfectly happy as an ensemble player in a supernatural TV show about vampires. 

As is the case with every fake relationship story in romance, especially because this is ALSO a second-chance romance, there's no way that Cynthie and Jack don't fall madly in love with each other. The book alternates between the present day and thirteen years ago, so the readers first get to see the older actors meeting again (and being instantly smitten with one another), but also get the whole complicated backstory of how the filming of the first movie and their fake relationship back then ended so catastrophically. 

One of my favourite things in Under Your Spell was the supporting cast of characters, like Clem's mothers and sisters, and Theo's micro-managing personal assistant. Here, Cynthie has a wonderful team of people taking care of her, including her best friend Hannah, who has been her personal assistant from the start. While Jack's parents are the absolute worst, he, too, has a lot of supportive friends, and then there's the crew of the movies, who also provide a lot of entertainment.

I literally bought this for my e-reader as soon as I finished Under Your Spell, and ended up liking it even more, possibly because a lot of different scenes in this reminded me of several of Lucy Parker's London Celebrities books, which remain some of my favourite contemporary romances. There were also references throughout to several of my favourite rom-coms, including While You Were Sleeping. Laura Wood is an author I will be eagerly searching for new releases from, based on the two books I read these last few days. If she writes another one as good as these, she may be a new auto-buy author for me.

Judging a book by its cover: This one has a much more traditional romance cover than Under Your Spell, and it gratifies me to see that the little cartoon people are actually wearing outfits as described in the book (that is so often not the case). 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

CBR18 Book 31: "This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me" by Ilona Andrews

Page count: 480 pages

Audio book length: 21 hrs 34 mins

Rating: 5 stars

Buzzwords Challenge 26: This/that/these/those

Maggie wakes up one day, cold, naked and soaked to the skin in the gutter of Kair Toren, the sprawling capital city of Rellas, where her favourite fantasy novels are set. For the past decade, Maggie has read and re-read the two books in the unfinished series enough times that she knows the setting, prominent characters and the plot intimately. It's what makes it possible for her to lie in wait, trying to rob a shady minor character just so she'll have enough money to get some clothes and shelter. While she's correct about when and where the character will show up, her robbery attempt ends with her being stabbed in the gut, which leads to her next discovery. She's stuck in the world of her favourite books, and while she can be killed, she doesn't stay dead.

Maggie is well-read and knows she's in an isekai fantasy. She knows the rules of such stories, and unfortunately, she's not as lucky as most characters in those kinds of stories. Unfortunately, unlike a lot of characters in such stories, Maggie is penniless, homeless and has no connections to anyone in the story. She does, however, have an encyclopedic knowledge of the plot of the world she's been transported into, so she knows which characters may prove useful allies, and which are best avoided at all costs. She knows how major events will play out and which characters will live, or die. She also discovers that she can read, understand and speak all the various languages of Rellas. In addition, she may be immortal.

She uses her knowledge to gain some useful allies, and in a remarkably short space of time, has acquired not only a safe place to stay, but has also become responsible for two young persons whom she rescued from enslavement. She knows at what point in time she has come into the story, and as a result, knows what is going to happen to the world and several characters she cares deeply about. Maggie decides she cannot, in good conscience, let the events as they are written come to pass. She wants to try to alter the events of the books, and as a result, possibly avoid the deaths of several of her favourite characters, not to mention stop a harrowing civil war and untold bloodshed. She just needs to convince her new friends that she can be trusted, and hope that her plans don't somehow make things worse. 

I read my first Ilona Andrews novel in 2009, early enough that they'd only published three books in the Kate Daniels series. I don't actually remember at what point they became not only auto-buy for me, but pre-order as soon as possible, possibly in more than one format (I have most of their books in e-book, dead tree, Graphic Audio audio dramas and/or audiobooks, even some in fancy signed special editions). I've read everything they've ever written, usually at least two or three times, sometimes five or six. Anyone who has been reading my reviews for a while knows that I am a proud card-carrying member of the BDH (Book Devouring Horde). I only have one tattoo (so far), and one element of it is a quote from one of their books ("If the sky could dream, it would dream of dragons" from Fate's Edge, if you're curious).

So it makes me immensely happy to see them reaching a lot of new readers with this rebrand (as my friend Christian, who works at the Oslo fantasy/sci-fi/comics/nerd shop Outland, calls it). A chonky epic fantasy novel, the first in a trilogy, which was acquired by Tor in a bidding war and has been promoted widely for months before its release. While it's their biggest book to date, both in size and scope, to me, as a loyal long-time reader, it was incredibly fun to see how many of the elements from their other books were clearly found in the pages of this one. It's basically their entire writing career, fine-tuned and distilled into a new series. 

You have the clever heroine, who, in contrast to all of Andrews' other heroines, doesn't have any advanced skills or magical powers. With the exception of Audrey from Fate's Edge, I think all of their female protagonists have both extensive fighting abilities and/or powerful magic at their disposal, while Maggie mostly has her mind. In addition to her near-perfect recall of everything that happens in the books, she also proves herself to be good at planning and strategic thinking.

Family, biological or found, also plays a major part in the Andrews' books. Since Maggie has been transported from our world into a fantasy one, she starts out alone and helpless, but before long, she has a loyal band of people surrounding her, willing to risk their lives to help her when she's in trouble (and she does get into trouble). 

There is also a very slow-burn romantic subplot, but anyone expecting romantasy or high spice will be disappointed (there's literally one kiss in the whole book - but what a kiss). Maggie believes herself to be wholly unremarkable, and the authors actually deliberately avoid describing her in too much detail (although the officially commissioned fan art on their website gives the readers a pretty clear idea of what all the major players look like), but she's clearly very pretty and constantly underestimates her allure to others. By the end of the story, she has multiple men who are smitten with her, and this is just the first book of the trilogy; there may be more to come. 

As I mentioned, there are several potential love interests, but I think it's rather clear from the story who the most likely HEA for Maggie is. Some really very unpleasant villains need to be defeated, or thousands of lives, including those of many of Maggie's favourite characters, are at stake. Because this is a long book, there are multiple mini-quests along the way, and Maggie ends up in mortal peril more than once (at one point, I was saying to my husband, "She may be undying, but can she regrow body parts? She can, by the way). 

As with a lot of epic fantasy, it's clear that Maggie has more thorough knowledge of some characters than others, because she's read their POV chapters in the books. Other characters, however, are much more of a mystery to her, because she's only read ABOUT them and hence doesn't know all their thoughts, wants and motivations. This means even Maggie, with her vast knowledge of Rellas and its inhabitants, can be surprised, and we readers along with her. 

As part of their promotional campaign, Tor had two chapters a week posted on their website in advance of the publication. I resisted the urge to read them until the evening before the book was out, which was good, because the final preview chapter ends on a heck of a cliffhanger. I was lucky enough that the Tuesday the book was released was during my Easter break from school, allowing me to devote the whole day to devouring the book on my e-reader, so I would know how everything turned out. While most of Andrews' stories tend to be mostly self-contained, this has the closest to a cliffhanger ending that I think they've ever had. Then I immediately started my re-read, this time in audio, and was able to savour the story more. Kristen Sieh is an amazing narrator and really captures the voices of the various characters excellently. Re-reading the book also allowed me to see how cleverly the authors had sprinkled hints and clues throughout the story, so that while there were several excellent plot twists along the way (the biggest one, about halfway through, literally made me do whatever the reading equivalent of a double-take is), they are, in fact, honestly foreshadowed along the way. You just don't know what is foreshadowing, and what isn't. 

Because Ilona Andrews are now reaching new readers, I have also been able to fangirl out in person with more than one member of my book club about this book (and I've been able to recommend other books in their back catalogue, which is always a very happy thing for a superfan to do). The authors have assured their readers that they are hard at work writing book 2 (it's at over 180 000 words and counting), and unlike in the fictional series Maggie so adores, there WILL be a book 3. Which brings me to yet another point: this is by far their most complex book project. The authors had to, in effect, write TWO stories while they were working on this. Rellas is a fictional world in Maggie's reality, but Ilona and Gordon had to sit down and plot out all the details and world-building of Maggie's favourite books, as well as the story about Maggie that we get to read. 

From my social media algorithms, it seems like some people have such a book hangover from this book that they just keep re-reading it again and again. I should probably be thankful that I currently have so many ARCs needing my attention that I have to take a break from it. I'm confident that I will re-read it at least once more before the end of the year, though, just to tide me over until Maggie's next book comes along. 

Judging a book by its cover: I have mentioned many times that Ilona Andrews seems cursed with terrible covers. At least Tor gave them an interesting-looking one for their epic fantasy. I promise that the weird bird creature on the cover is actually relevant to the plot, although it takes a while for it to enter the story. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

CBR17 Book 32: "Manic Pixie Dream Earl" by Jenny Holiday

Page count: 320 pages

Audio book length: 11 hrs 15 mins

Rating: 3.5 stars

Thanks to Jenny Holiday, Netgalley and Tantor Audio for this ARC. My opinion is my own.

Edward "Effie" Astley, Viscount Featherfinch, is a poet and a terrible disappointment to his father. Thankfully, he's about to set off on the annual "Earl's trip" with his two best friends, who support him come what may. So they don't ask any questions when Effie asks them to help him store a broken printing press, nor why he's so preoccupied with letters from a Miss Evans. Effie doesn't really want to confess to having become infatuated with a non-aristocratic lady, who coincidentally thinks he's a woman too, called Euphemia. 

Miss Julianna Evans loves the magazine she publishes, but hates that her odious brother insists on weekly editorial meetings and keeps questioning every decision she makes, constantly cutting her budget. Normally, she's far too busy to ever consider taking a brief holiday, but when there is a delay at her printers, and the alternative is waiting impatiently at her sister's house, generally just being in the way, she impulsively decides that she's going to spend some of her hard-earned savings to go to Brighton to meet her best friend Euphemia, who she knows will be staying there with her friends. 

Brighton isn't a big enough place for Effie and Julianna to avoid each other for very long (nor would this be a particularly effective romance novel if they did). Considering Effie has been lying about his identity to Julianna for the past five years, she gets over the deceit remarkably quickly. Effie's two best buds also take it in their stride that their slightly unorthodox bestie is in love with a magazine publisher who is quite a few years his elder.

The publisher claims that this book is Ted Lasso meets Bridgerton meets The Hangover. I have complained in the past that absolutely everything set in the Regency era is now marketed towards "fans of Bridgerton", and I can only surmise that the Ted Lasso comparison is made because this book features non-toxic male friendships and guys who support each other in wholesome ways, while The Hangover is thrown in there because it's the most famous dudes on a road trip story out there, even now, sixteen years later. I despair at these sales pitches. 

There is a lot to like here. Effie is bisexual and has no problem admitting this to his friends, although his friends seem to have suspected him to be gay and/or asexual before he reveals his feelings for Julianna. There's the aforementioned non-toxic male friendships. We have an age gap, where the heroine is about a decade older than the hero (Effie is in his late twenties, Julianna is in her late thirties). Most of the book takes place in Brighton rather than London, and the more unusual location made for a nice change. 

Harry Frost does a good job with the narration of the book, but I find that about a month after finishing the story, I don't remember too much of the overall plot. While I've liked several of Jenny Holiday's contemporary romances, I'm not sure I liked her rather unusual take on the historical genre. Nevertheless, I already own Earl's Trip, the first book in the series, so I'll probably get round to reading it at some point. I also hope she gets round to writing about Effie's friend Olive in some future instalment, she was the most interesting supporting character here. 

Judging a book by its cover: This cover is rather busy, and features a number of people in various situations, not all of which take place in the actual story, unless my memory entirely fails me. I think there are too many things going on here. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read

CBR16 Book 3: "Dance with the Devil" by Kit Rocha

Page count: 416 pages

Rating: 4.5 stars

After his father died, Rafael "Rafe" Morales basically sold himself to TechCorps and agreed to become a technologically enhanced supersoldier, so he could make enough money to keep his widowed mother and younger siblings safe. He didn't really know what signing away his life would entail, and given the choice again, he probably would have chosen differently. He hasn't been able to see them for years, certainly not since he and his team, the Silver Devils, had to fake their own deaths to get away from their cruel superiors.

Unlike Rafe, Danijela "Dani" Volkova didn't really have external pressures that made her sign up with TechCorps. She was just curious and driven, and once their scientists had experimented sufficiently on her, she became super fast, agile, and graceful and lost the ability to feel pain, at all. This made her the perfect elite bodyguard for the rich and powerful, until she just couldn't handle the cruelty and corruption she was witness to and broke away. She joined Nina and Maya to become one of the mercenary librarians of Atlanta. Dani feels like TechCorps turned her into a monster. She appreciates the love that her chosen sisters and the former supersoldiers who share their lives offer her, but deep down she knows she doesn't deserve it. 

Since their very first meeting, when Dani may have "accidentally" stabbed Rafe a little bit, the chemistry between them has been off the charts. But Rafael doesn't want a quick fling, Dani doesn't do long-term commitment, and neither is willing to risk screwing up their new big, unusual family unit with relationship drama. Keeping everything casual and platonic becomes a lot more difficult when the two have to go undercover among the rich and deplorable of Atlanta. After the death of Tobias Richter, the VP of Security for TechCorps, and the one who sat with most of the power, the organisation is desperately scrambling to maintain control, and our enhanced heroes and heroines have decided that it's time to start fighting back. 

Having come into unexpected wealth at the end of the previous book, Maya is using all of her considerable resources and brains, her wealth of sensitive information burned into her brain after growing up in the loving arms of TechCorps and learning a lot of its dirty secrets, as well as calling in all the favours from her vast network of informants and allies. It's one such ally, a head researcher at TechCorps, whom Rafe and Dani are trying to contact when they go undercover, as a married couple. Once on the mission, they not only discover that Rafe's little sister is in terrible danger, but it also becomes impossible for them to keep their hands off each other. 

This is the third and probably final (there is a suggestion at the end of the epilogue in this one that there may be new dangers facing our intrepid band of heroes, but it seems like the author duo has moved on to new projects now) novel in the Mercenary Librarians series. As such, it's not the best place to start. This might very well not be an almost five-star read to someone else but as the end chapter of all that has been established in the previous two books, with all the seeds sown and the principal cast, as well as the various supporting characters, joining together to launch a full-scale revolution, I loved this book. The romance between Dani and Rafe has been teased from the beginning and didn't disappoint. 

Both Dani and Rafe got turned into lethal weapons by TechCorps, but Rafael grew up in a loving family and always knew that the sacrifices he made were for them. Dani was rejected by her parents once they realised the choices she had made, and was honed into a ruthless killing machine by the scientists. She is fiercely loyal and has vast capacities for love and emotion, all of which she is worthy of, but takes her quite some time to come to terms with. 

I loved this book, and its action-packed and thrilling finale, where the downtrodden of Atlanta join with our protagonists to kick ass and take names, in order to secure a better future, free of the dominance of TechCorps and their controlling ways. 

Judging a book by its cover: The cover for this one at least has slightly more of a sci-fi feel than the last one, but it's still a pretty generic image and I certainly would never have picked up this book from the cover alone. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read

CBR16 Books 2: "The Devil You Know" by Kit Rocha

Page count: 416 pages

Rating: 4 stars

Maya used to be Marjorie Chevalier, but had to change her identity after she escaped the evil super scientists at TechCorps, where she was trained as a data courier (basically a human hard drive), with her senses specially enhanced to remember flawlessly everything she hears, reads, sees, hears and experiences. She used to work for one of the Vice Presidents of TechCorps who was secretly orchestrating a rebellion, However, her boss (also the only maternal figure Maya ever knew) was caught and executed, and Maya had to be smuggled to safety. 

She found that safety with Nina, now one of the sisters she never had. Along with the lethal Dani, they have been working to help the residents of post-apocalyptic Atlanta by passing on free information (books, videos, music) and technical know-how. They also occasionally go off on adventures to recover more books and resources. After the events of the previous books, their little found family has expanded a lot, with the former supersoldiers from the Silver Devils squad having settled down in a warehouse next to the librarians' headquarters. The group is hired to retrieve what turns out to be a genetically modified child, and it turns out that Rainbow (which is the name the child chooses for herself) is not the only one. Since Maya doesn't have super speed or strength, she stays back home holding the fort, accompanied by Grey, the former sniper of the Silver Devils, who can't be trusted on a tense mission since his body might betray him.

All the Silver Devils have technical implants that have enhanced their senses. Supersoldiers like them don't normally have a very long lifespan, but in rare cases, their bodies might start rejecting the implant after decades of being used to them. This is what is happening to Grey now. He can suddenly be struck with seizures and an operation to replace the implant has a less than 5% chance of survival, even if they could find a surgeon skilled enough to perform the operation. So Grey is accepting that he doesn't have long to live. One of the things he wants to do with his final days is make sure Maya has the skills and confidence to defend herself and keep herself safe. She's always been told that she needs to be careful not to overload her brain, or she can pretty much short-circuit, but Grey suspects that she's limiting herself out of fears told to her to control her and keep her from reaching her full potential. He shows her that not only is she an absolute wizard with all things technical, but her perfect recall is a superpower in itself, if not as physically intimidating as those of her chosen sisters.

There is a very strong attraction between Maya and Grey, however, the only man Maya ever loved before was literally tortured to death in front of her in an attempt to get her to reveal the secrets buried in her brain after her boss was executed. She's also prone to sensory overload and doesn't really know how she'd react in a physically overwhelming situation, like having sex. Letting herself fall for a man who's dying is bound to lead to heartbreak, but not acting on the attraction before it's too late might be a bigger mistake than keeping her distance.

While Maya and the Silver Devils all had very skillful people hiding their tracks and faking their deaths (complete with falsified bodies with their DNA planted), Tobias Richter, the VP of Security at TechCorps is a ruthless and deeply driven man, convinced (rightly so) that he can find them if he searches hard enough. When a video from a farmer's market surfaces, proving to him that his quarries are still alive, Maya and Grey's days together might be numbered sooner than they think. 

I enjoyed Deal with the Devil, which introduced the world and all these characters to each other. Now the super soldiers and the high-tech murder ladies all live together as a big, ruthlessly efficient, and deadly family, doing their best to right wrongs and improve their local community. Maya has always felt like the weakest of the group, and the lies to her by her former boss to keep her from showing too much of her excellence to Tech Corps means she hasn't been able to reach her true potential until Grey comes along and makes her see how truly remarkable she is, even in a dangerous situation. She's not just brains and perfect recall. Their romance develops slowly since Grey is likely to die soon, and Maya has some understandable emotional scars from her first and only romantic relationship so far.

The villain in this book is a complete psycho, and once he discovers that Maya and the Silver Devils are alive, he lures them into a trap to get his clutches on Maya. Of course, Maya is no longer a delicate flower raised in a sheltered environment and beats Tobias Richter at his own game. Things look dicey for Grey for a while (who to be fair already thought he was dying, so wanted to save Maya with the grandest of gestures), but this is a romance, and our brave, self-sacrificing hero doesn't actually end the book dead. 

By the end of this book, our altruistic heroes and heroines have some difficult choices to make. Their attempts to stay hidden from TechCorps have clearly failed, and a confrontation is inevitable. Are they ready to go to war?

Judging a book by its cover: This is about as generic as covers go. Nothing about this says post-apocalyptic action adventure with kick-ass murder ladies and supersoldier dudes. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read