Many would have believed that rich playboy Quent Fielding never wanted for much – after all, what could a man who could do whatever he wanted and date whoever he wished crave in life? But Quent, an abused child, had always wanted for love. The real, no strings attached kind.

And now, having woken up in a post-apocalyptic world created by man’s greed, he wants one thing more: Revenge. Revenge against a man who would destroy a planet to achieve immortality for himself. Revenge against the man who beat him as a child. In short, Quent wants to kill his father and to take from him the immortality his father gained at the cost of death to millions of others.

Zoe Kapoor is also on a quest for vengeance. A single night of sneaking away from home had both saved her life and destroyed it. For while she was out, her family and friends were slaughtered by ganga-controlled by bounty hunter Raul Marck. Since then, Zoe’s only real goal in life has been to avenge herself against the man who took everything she valued from her teenaged self. Recently, though, she has reluctantly found herself expanding her world. The hot blonde she rescued from the ganga – and with whom she’s been sharing booty calls for the last few months – inspires her to want more. To be more. To once more long for something good in her life.

When Quent demands Zoe help him turn their encounters into something more than just a hit and run, she is at first reluctant, especially since the sexy Brit has begun to make it past the defenses she has placed on her heart. But Zoe finds that Quent’s strange gifts provide a guide she has never before had. And Quent finds that maybe there can be more for him in this future beyond vengeance.

I struggled with this book simply because it had so many plots going. There is the issue of Quent’s gift and how that affects him. There is the subplot with Remington Truth. There is the issue with Raul Marck and his son and what they are doing. There is the issue of the strangers. And once we find Quent’s father, there is a new issue and a new set of people to deal with. There is also the issue of the present – what is going on with Envy, what the rest of the world looks like. And then there is the romance. In the midst of all that, I think it is the romance that most gets short-changed. While we have seen Zoe and Quent have sultry encounters in books one and two, when they meet up here there is just not much sizzle. I got a real sense of them being bogged down by everything that happened around them. Their quests for vengeance also served as a distancing factor – with all that hate flying around it can be hard to focus on love.

It wasn’t just that they didn’t work for me as a couple, I also wasn’t wild about them as individuals. I couldn’t understand where Zoe, who was as capable of throwing together a warm and inviting home as she was of creating customized arrow tips specifically designed for killing ganga, got all her skills. There seemed to be a gap in the descriptions of her past that enabled her to do everything she did. That gap plagued me throughout the book as she would add one thing after another to her skill set.

Quent I just didn’t really get a handle on. He was a massively important character in that his father was the reason for the post-apocalyptic world and in that his gift was probably the most useful in terms of solving the mystery of the Strangers. But as a person, I couldn’t really connect with him. I think that had a lot to do with how much he had to deal with – from finding an old friend in an awkward position to learning more about his criminally insane father. I think if the book had taken more time, if we could have just been still with the characters for a bit, there would have been more of a connection for me. I did like Quent – he seemed like an overall decent guy – but the disconnection left me rooting for him in a very passive manner. It’s a romance; I knew he would get his girl and I just couldn’t work up much energy or enthusiasm for how.

So I’ve told you all the bad, let me tell you about the good. One of the things I really, really like about this series is how Ware has infused it with hope. It is not just bands of ruffians destroying what is left of humanity or tales of the oppressed under evil dictators. The humans depicted are smart, resourceful, and caring. People see problems and deal with them, not just wring their hands and hope for a hero. It is not just the city of Envy that has done this, but small pockets of communities throughout the new world are rebuilding and carrying on against the odds. Love it.

I also like the fact that Ware deals with what happened to cause the Change. While I felt a bit bogged down in this book (OK, a lot bogged down), it makes sense that people would want to know just what happened and why. People who were alive before the change are still around. Why wouldn’t they want to know what destroyed their world? Why wouldn’t they want to know how to fix things? Too often in post-apocalyptic literature we see humanity just shrugging about the past, but I think that is unrealistic. We are curious by nature; it is an instinct that helps us survive and thrive, and we wouldn’t just throw that aside when the going got tough.

Another great thing about this world is that they embrace technology. No sense that the evil machines brought us to our doom. I like my gadgets so I can embrace a world that likes them too.

While the romance definitely didn’t rock my world, this book and the series overall is still deeply intriguing and well worth a look. This book contains a lot of important information that will shape future books and I would recommend it on the strength of that alone.