Sometimes I want to tell a book "It's not you. It's me." and I felt like that reading this one. There's a lot to like here, it's an interesting world with it's new world order and devastated population. Chess is an interesting heroine, and if I was unsure at first about a drug addict narrator, I think Kane does a good job of letting us know the whys of Chess's addiction. Although she's got some strong powers in many ways Chess is one of the most vulnerable UF heroines I've read, which makes her world feel even more dangerous.The issues I had are really just things that aren't my thing. I'm not the biggest fan of dystopian stories in general. Ironically they make me depressed about our current society. And I find that I put them down easily since I'm not actually anxious to spend more time in the world. But anyway, one could actually argue that Chess's life is better in this world anyway, given her past and her problems. Another personal bugaboo of mine is when the heroine is the only woman in the book. Every other character with more than a handful of lines is male. Again, it's just a thing that bugs me, if it's not a thing that bugs you then you probably wouldn't even notice it.
In short, the things that dragged this book down for me are very personal to me. I can definitely see how it would work for other people. The characters, plot and world were all interesting and engaging. Many times the first book in a series isn't my favorite (the first Kate Daniels for example) so I will give the second one a shot before I decide on the rest of the series.
