Katyana's Reviews > Forged

** spoiler alert ** This was a fun one, because we not only got some big questions answered with Max, but we also got a deepening to the mystery of this city and the larger world. I hope we get resolution on that. Like, who brainwashed everyone? And did this place just drop out of the larger world and, like, no one from the continent ever tried to go there and see what is going on? It's fascinating.

I liked that Max was better about standing up for herself, but she didn't go far enough. Look, her not doing anything to call out Kitris and Emmeline's self-serving bullshit doesn't make her a modest-type hero. It makes her an enabler. She's enabling frankly evil people to stay in power. Pretty much everything that has gone to shit can be laid at the feet of the Order not doing their goddamn jobs. They're pathetic and useless, and Max allows them to use her to prop themselves up by allowing them to claim THEY did the things she did. Kitris claiming he closed the Grey Gates himself when the truth is he sent an untrained and abused, indoctrinated child to do it...his most sacred responsibility as head of the Order. He sent her and 9 warriors there to die. And when she didn't die, he threw her out like trash. There is no excuse. For him to be so vehement about his belief that she lied about closing the gates ... is everyone fucking stupid? There were portents in the world that they were open and the dark lord was coming through from the underworld. Max was sent on her mission, came back, said she closed them but everyone else died. They said she lied ... but the portents stopped and the dark lord never showed up. What do these brain-dead fucking assholes think closed the gates? A stiff breeze? Anyone other than a goddamn moron knew she closed them, because 8 years have gone by since then and not a peep from the gates.

And then more recently, Kitris the Worthless claimed that he stopped the ritual at the docks, despite not even being there for the fight. And there were a lot of other people there - including Orshiasa (who I also think is a bag of utter shit) - so it isn't like it's a secret Kitris fucking lied about it, so why don't these stupid assholes put together that he's lied about ALL OF IT, ALWAYS.

I hope the author didn't want me to feel sad about Kitris killing himself. I don't. Not even a tiny speck of sad. As far as I'm concerned, the trash took itself out.

And I am not going to tolerate Max being sad about it. This is a man who has done nothing but abuse her. And I don't want to hear that she's sad she never found resolution with her "father" - she has known he was her sperm donor for like 2 days, so no. That's not going to fly.

I think the entire Order and priesthood is such worthless trash, across the board (all the magic users, I mean - the warriors are generally good people), that it makes me think less of the Lady, frankly. For a deity who is that able to interact with the manifest world, she has no excuses for allowing such corrupt garbage to be in control of her Order and priesthood. And yes, I'm including Orshiasa in that.

And speaking of him, I don't understand why Max talks to Orshiasa at all. If Kitris was a 99 on the 1-100 scale of assholes, Orshiasa is a 95. There's no excuse for how Orshiasa basically gaslit her into thinking she's stupid and worthless when he was her master. He's a short-sighted, hide-bound dipshit who has helped run the Order right into the toilet.

If the final book doesn't end with vast changes to the Order - including the warriors either being treated as equal members or all of them leaving - then I'm going to be deeply disappointed with this series.

And if Max doesn't get her shit together and stop letting corrupt assholes walk all over her as if she's some pathetic, humble martyr, I'm going to be really mad. I was absolutely not impressed with her weird defensive impulses towards Kitris - "he always tried to do the right thing" ... uh NO HE FUCKING DID NOT - and that shit needs to end. It's why this book lands at 4 stars.