The Diabolic
by S.J. Kincaid
What does it mean to be human? S. J. Kincaid tackles that question with this trilogy. Humanity has perfected Artiffical Intelligence centuries ago, back when the elites of society moved to space, some making a home on small astroids and other living on the emperors enormous space ship. With advance technology, advance security is needed to protect vulnerable human beings, so a creature called Diabolic's, are created.
These beings are man-made, but they look like humans, only they have superhuman strength and speed, and they are bought and programed to protect one person.The protagonist is a diabolic by the name of Nemesis, and she's programed to protect the daughter of a lesser noble of the empire. The daughter is called to do business on the emperors ship, however, the nobles knew of the emperors cruelness and that if they sent their daughter, they probably would never see her again, so they used beauty bots and made Nemesis look exactly like her and sent the diabolic instead.
Nemesis has a hard time fitting in and understanding subtleties of humanity, but she doesn't care what happens to her, as being there was protecting her charge who remained behind.
After everything goes wrong, and Nemesis loses her charge, but fell in love with the youngest prince, she never sees herself the same again. This trilogy is a 11/10.
I loved how we got to see Nemesis be strong, but also unsure, she wanted love but didn't feel like she deserved it because she had been told her whole life that she was below humanity, meant to serve one person and since she'd lost her, Nemesis had felt useless. She didn't think she had a heart that could love, until it was broken.
Then the prince, after faking insanity in order to be left alive, falls in love with her. They team up, and Nemesis becomes empress, but then her husband is poisoned and soon he is destroying his entire empire, taking it down from the top. Nemesis can't tell if he has actually gone insane or just acting to keep his head, but he plays her, lies to her, even ordered her death and it broke her heart.
One of the things I really appreciated about Kincaid's writing style was that she skips over Nemesis gaining support thought the galaxy, she doesn't slow the plot with her parading around, but she simply made the revolution happen, but since we've all read about how they happen in different novels, she kept it to small rebel groups on the emperors ships and kept it realistic, and to the point.
The plot whet to a planet only one time, so I'm glad she didn't take us back and step by step write out how humanity was rooting for Nemesis to stop the oppressive empire.
I recommend this trilogy to anyone who likes space, sci-fiction, deeply cunning characters, friendship and romance. I would love to see this made into a movie but it could never do it justice to how beautiful Kincaid describes Nemesis's tragic and complicated world.
:)
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