Heaven’s Queen (Paradox book 3)

I really loved this series, but part of what made me love it, also began to annoy me by book three. Devi is not talented at thinking through noncombat problems. It is a trait I love about her, because she tries to turn everything into combat so she can understand it better. However, to solve the over-reaching universe-is-in-danger problem of the book she needed a better approach. I wish at some point she’d decided she needed to go find more information, and that is why she went to see Dr. Starchild. Or that she’d tried harder to communicate with the phantoms when they so obviously wanted to talk to her. Instead, to a degree, it felt like she wandered around until she ran into some useful things that explained to her how to save the universe.

Her short-fallings as a thinker also meant it took her a very long time to come to the decision she ultimately needed to make at the beginning of this book. Devi is a control-freak when it comes to the safety of others. Having witnessed the attitude the Eyes, and the enemies of the Eyes had to sparing soldiers, daughters, or civilian lives, she didn’t feel safe putting her virus under their control. Even with her deal with Caldswell, I’m not sure she ever would’ve handed over the virus willingly. Ultimately, Devi needed to realize she didn’t want anyone else to have that power, and instead of trying to avoid everyone, she needed to sit down and solve the problem of how to use the virus. She got there in the end, but only after trying every other way of putting the problem in someone else’s hands didn’t work out.

I’m not sure that Devi is any better at non-combat problem solving then when we started. I really wanted to see that kind of character growth, but to Devi, that was probably too much like a desk job. Despite my impatience, I did really love this series. Devi is so prone to violence that there were always new battles to look forward to. Only Devi could make what was an ultimately peaceful solution into an all-out war against almost everyone. If she’d been better at bringing people over to her side, we’d have been robbed of all that fun fighting.

Now that this series is complete, I want a series about the new daughters. They have all the power and position to rule the universe. They’re working for important government decision-makers, and they can instantly communicate with each other. In fact, I think they’d make great villains. Who can fight that kind of power? Also, I hope they win.