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Characters fling slurs casually (the coach uses the word SPOILERS “ retard” END SPOILERS on three occasions, and one of the team members calls another character a SPOILERS faggot END SPOILERS, and though that character is meant to be unlikable, no one even reacts to this. And characters were constantly doing abhorrent things and almost no one called them on it. *It’s very possible to have unlikable characters in your book, or characters who make bad or amoral choices, if they are interesting and written well. I felt constantly as if I were an alien visiting from another planet, and I learned the language before I came, but not the customs or the context. I kept mixing up characters in the beginning, or literally not understanding what they were talking about, because she kept having them refer to things she hadn’t introduced yet, but it was done in a way that was frustrating instead of intriguing.

The worldbuilding and character info was not handled well. Everything was confusing: character motives, behaviors, the rules of Exy, how dialogue fit together (sometimes it didn’t even feel like characters were responding to what was being said, but following their own imaginary conversations instead). *I talked a little about confusion, but that was a big issue here, and it wasn’t just limited to logistics and worldbuilding. It is unbelievably obvious to me that this book was not edited, or if it was, not edited competently. The end result was that I spent a lot of time trying to figure out something that didn’t matter at all. I think it might have been a football game Neil’s monologue was referring to as the “second game” but nowhere in text is that evident and it was SO CONFUSING. They then do not even have the second game at all, instead the team goes on a morning show (on a Saturday?) and then spends the weekend partying. The biggest example I can remember right now is that Sakavic goes out of her way to have Neil’s internal monologue tell us that Palmetto State has two games in one weekend (which never happens in real life, to begin with, so that was confusing to me), and how they know they’re going to lose to Breckenridge, but they have a hope of winning against the other team, and then the narrative makes a big deal out of how they need to do that. This sloppiness contributed to my confusion throughout the book.

(It is not hard to do simple research!) There were many instances like this, as well as blatant continuity errors, like one second the stadium seats 60k people, the next it seats 100k. There was a kid in my high school who ran a mile in four and half minutes. I am one of the most out of shape people I know, and I used to run a fourteen minute mile. I almost threw my phone across the room at how breathtakingly wrong this was. It’s not difficult to Google fast mile times, for example, but instead Sakavic has her NCAA COLLEGE ATHLETES inform the main character Neil that his “fourteen minute mile” means he is SUPER FAST. The text openly contradicts itself on many occasions, and also openly contradicts reality and facts. I’m going to bullet point the rest of this in an effort to sort out my thoughts: This didn’t need to be as toxic or confusing as Sakavic made it. Seeing where the book ended up, I can now see what Sakavic was going for, but I still think she utterly botched her execution. Actual stakes were now present, and the characters started behaving more like human beings. It wasn’t until the last 5% of the book that I became emotionally engaged with it. On top of that, I was confused as hell by the sloppy writing and continuity. It was unpleasant to be in these characters’ company, and they didn’t seem to like themselves much either. I didn’t like a single character, and actively hated many of them. Most of the time I was reading it, I was irritated and utterly flummoxed about why people loved this series. I read three novel length fanfics in the time I was supposed to be reading this book. I should have been able to kick it out in hours, in less than a day. This was a 262 page book that felt like 500.

Look, I have a lot of thoughts, and many of them are confused, so bear with me. There is no romance in this book at all, but I can feel it coming on in the future. There is supposed to be an inherent conflict in the premise between Neil’s desire to play the sport he loves, which will bring him into the spotlight, and his desire to stay hidden and alive. He also happens to have been childhood friends with one of his teammates, and works very hard not to be recognized. The main character is the son of a crime lord and has been on the run for most of his life he is living under a fake identity when he’s recruited. It follows a team of college athletes playing a made-up sport called Exy at a fictional university called Palmetto State. It’s entirely self-published, and managed to break through somehow.

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If you’re not aware of this book, a while back this series started making the rounds on Tumblr.

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