Rebel Born

Secondborn, Book 3

By: Amy A. Bartol

Narrated by: Kate Reinders

Length: 11 hrs and 11 mins

Publisher's summary

Roselle faces a mind-reeling showdown with the deep state agent controlling her psyche in the Wall Street Journal bestselling conclusion to the Secondborn series.

Roselle St. Sismode is many things: victim of a conspiracy, unwilling host of an ever-evolving mind algorithm, spy for a rebel army, and heir to the Fate of Swords. As a warrior, she’s also the anticipated main event at the Secondborn Trials. When the opening ceremonies erupt in chaos, Roselle is abducted by a sadistic agent with a diabolical plan: transform Roselle into a mind-controlled assassin to topple society. But a rogue scientist has implanted Roselle with a genius technology that is far more powerful. It renders her untouchable. Faster. Stronger. And maybe immortal.

With her enhanced abilities come the highest stakes yet, as Roselle confronts shifting realities at every turn as well as her own mother’s stunning betrayal. Racing against time with a determined resistance group, can Roselle overthrow the forces of destruction and reclaim the most valuable of commodities - her humanity?

©2019 Amy A. Bartol (P)2019 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.

This Is A Totally Different Series!!

This Final Book In The Trilogy Was Extremely Disappointing!! This third book seems like a totally different series was ending not the same story at all as the fist two books. The first two books of the series were extremely exciting and at the very least had the cohesiveness of a shared story and plot! This third book is totally out-of-left-field.

First off, it is extremely extremely meta and a good 2/3rds. of the book has no action, whereas the first two were action sequence after action sequence. Secondly, it seems extremely rushed towards the end or to be a bit more specific, during the series' resolution of the ongoing narrative of basically GOOD vs. EVIL. The ending seemed to me at the very least, very rushed and hastily and shoddily thrown together by the author to meet a deadline and not a natural let alone satisfying ending to a TRILOGY SERIES. I feel a lot of the minutia and slow progression that dominates the entire middle of this book could have been better edited and cut down and left more TIME for the telling of the end of this book and final battle sequence!! in fact that now occurs to me after just finishing the book, that the entire beginning and middle seem to have been put together very carefully and thoughtfully whereas the ending as I said prior seems to be rushed to meet a deadline it is very obvious that not the same care and time was taken with the end of this book as it was with writing the beginning and middle of this book, again this is just my humble opinion. Finally, the ending was extremely lackluster and anti-climactic. We as the readers definitely deserved a better ending than that!!!!!!!!!!!

If you have listened to the first two books in the series and feel a need to hear the ending to this story, I still would not suggest getting it or using a credit on it!!

VERY VERY DISAPPOINTING!!!!!!!!!!!

What the heck was that?

I want to start off my saying, I love Amy Bartol. Her Kricket Series is one of my all-time favorites that I’ve read multiple times.
However, I did not enjoy the final book to the Secondborn series. I almost DNFed it, but continued on because of my love for Amy.

I’m not even sure how to write this review, because I’m not sure what the heck I just read.

This diverges SO much from the first two books that it doesn’t even feel like the same story. The characters don’t act consistent with their past selves in books one and two. There are huge elements that are vital to the story that are brand-spanking new and confusing as hell. These elements should have been woven or teased throughout the first two books if they were going to be such a huge deal in the final one. All of a sudden, in a world of high technology, we have alternate dimensions, ancient gods, dragon-creatures and people coming back from the dead.

We also don’t get a true resolution to the major problem that the characters are trying to solve. Spectrum and Crowe (and their invincibility) were hyped up SO much, and then with a single emotionally-charged thought Roselle “wins”? I don’t accept that as a resolution. It feels way to easy for a problem that is way too complex.

I also did not enjoy the resolution to the love arc. Once again, it felt too easy. There was so heartache, no real reason why any of the three love interests won or lost in the “battle” for Roselle’s heart. I don’t even feel like there was a battle. One person just wins, a second person also wins (see alternative universe mentioned above), and the third—we never get a final resolution. I feel a little cheated all the way around.

I love Amy, her imagination and her writing style. I can tell she put a lot of hard work into this series. Unfortunately with this last book, the series wasn’t for me.

I can't finish it

I'm only on chapter 7 and I've completely lost interest. None of it makes sense, the storyline doesn't follow anything previously established. I'm currently in the middle of the bad guy explaining all of his plans to everybody. It's really boring and unnecessary. Unfortunate because the first two books were incredible. Reading the other reviews has confirmed that I will not be finishing this book. Luckily it was free through Kindle unlimited.

Didn't think it could be that bad

I'll start by saying that I LOVED the first two books of this series. I waited for months for this final book, but before the audiobook was released I read through quite a few reviews. Most, if not all, were pretty negative, but I needed to finish the series so I purchased the audiobook anyway. I went into the book thinking this can't possibly be that bad right? I was wrong. It was a MESS. The book went completely off track and felt ridiculously rushed. There's so much buildup to Roselle and Crow's final fight and then it was just over. This is actually the second ending that I've felt really let down by from this author. I wasn't too happy with the Kricket series ending either, so this may be my last venture into her books.

I wanted to like it

I normally enjoy this author, enough so that I ignored the negative reviews to get this book. It doesn’t seem to bear any relationship to the books that came before it. Nothing makes sense. Things happen randomly that aren’t explained. There is no tension. It’s like one of those action movies that is all action and no backstory so you aren’t invested in the characters. Did this author fire her editor? Get a ghost writer? I hate to leave negative reviews because I appreciate how hard it is to write a good book but this is disappointing and unusual for this author. Poor writing throughout and no discernible story arc. After ten chapters I had had enough.

What story was this?

You might consider this review slightly spoilery, so be warned. This book seems like it's own series separate from the other books. It went from futuristic technology and dystopian themes to full on Sci-fi tech, splicing, cloning, superpowers, under water fortresses, dragons, gods, goddesses, and alternative realities or worlds. THEN it ends like pushing you off a cliff. Just BAM the end, no real wrap up. The epilogue helps a little, but wow, for all the build up, the ending is a little bit of a let down. (performance gets 4 stars instead of 5, because there were some points where it was difficult to tell who was speaking)

these books had good story potential.

These books had good story line potential, but were contaminated by trite teenage girl type emotional writing.

Confusing ending

The first two books of this series were amazing. And this one started out great. But then the scifi and dystopian elements were replaced by new things. New things that were never hinted at or foreshadowed. How are you going to have a world built on science then randomly introduce alternate realities, dragons, and make human characters suddenly into gods. Several characters dies and come back to life to the point where it felt like the author wrote herself into a corner and the only way she could get out of it was by breaking all the world rules she set and writing nonsense.
This author can craft amazing worlds and characters but she has a difficult time creating a series with an ending that makes sense.

The ending was too rushed

The beginning of this book went into too much detail and at parts seemed to drag on. Then, once it got to less than 2 hrs to go, the book seemed extremely rushed and unsatisfying. More should have been put into the end maybe taken some out from the beginning and middle of the book.

Not what i expected

spoiler alert: she became a matrix like Neo like god, fighting an matrix like agent smith in Crow, who was created by an unseen architect like mastermind who wanted take over multiple worlds simultaneously. I won't even get into the love story. It was ridiculous.

More Sci-fi than Fantasy

It was bound to happen, Kimpson Crow has annihilated pretty much everyone, apart from Roselle, of course. She has now become something of a cyborg!

I think I was disappointed in this third book of the trilogy. Nothing prepared the listener/reader in Book 2 for what was to come and it was something of a disappointment for me. The ending, also, left a lot to be desired and seemed rushed. What a shame. This started out as a promise of a brilliant trilogy and was spoilt towards the end by what seemed to be a loss of focus and far too much technology speak.

Ruined the trilogy

After waiting a long time for this book I was severely disappointed, it was different from the 1st two. The story turned into a si fi genre that would not have been too bad on it's own but was a horrid continuation of the first two books. There were aspects of the book not explored ending was completely unsatisfactory it was awful. a real shame for what started as a brilliant series.

The plot twist in this goes away from the reality.

was thoroughly enjoying the continuation of the 2nd born lives only to have the weirdest twist half way through. Although I enjoyed it, I'd like to have seen it play out as it started. Without giving spoilers the story didn't follow its natural path but headed in a whimsical direction that didn't really fit with how it started. If the whimsical.had been there in the 1st and 2nd book it would have been more seamless. It's almost like the author ran out of idea on how.to finish the 3rd book and thought I'll add complete fantasy into it and then give it an abrupt ending.
It spoilt it a little for me and brought the rating down. Such a shame as the 1st 2 books had me hooked and rated 5* from me.

What did I just listen to?

First two books were good, this one was ridiculous and completely unbelievable. AI, dragons, clones, parallel worlds, gods and super powers. Seems the author couldn't decide where to go with it so decided to throw it all into this final book. It's a shame because the first two were really good.

A mystical ending to the series

Following on from the first two books the finale ends in a mystical way which I feel takes away from the original plot.

disappointing end

I feels a bit like that the author had an urgent appointment and needed to finish the book. Very aprupt and "in the middle of things" like. I actually spent some time going forward and backward because I thought I must have missed a whole chunk of the story....

What?

Did someone else write this third book? How on earth did it become AI, parallel worlds, gods and dragon men?
So disappointed by this book, sloppy storyline that feels as if the author closed her eyes and threw random darts at a mood/genre board and thought why choose one when I can use all of them and give everyone a happy ending.

Very Imaginative

Great story with some unexpected twists. well written and thought out. performed really well too