A review by mallorypen
The Electric Heir by Victoria Lee

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

That was a lot.

If I were to tag this book, the main tags would be "whump," "hurt/no comfort," and "child abuse." Getting through the story was a challenge; not because it wasn't well written (because it was) or the characters weren't compelling (because they were) or the plot wasn't satisfying, but because it was one horrific act of abuse and violence after another by a person who turned out to be more insidious than he was revealed to be at the end of Book 2.

Spoilers ahead.

Lehrer as a villain is ruthlessly terrifying. The sexual abuse of his own adopted child is horrific. The grooming and then sexual abuse of his next victim, Noam - while still abusing Dara, but in new and awful ways - is horrific. The reveal that he's using Noam's blood to steal his strength and ultimately push him towards fever madness - just like he did to Dara! - is horrific. The way he punished Noam for not wanting to sleep with him anymore, and for protecting his mind from Lehrer's persuasion ... H O R R I F I C. Using Noam and Dara as assassins? Using Noam and the other Level 4 cadets as basically canon fodder? And that's not even counting the actual war crimes he commits by poisoning his own people to make more witchings. 

There were a few things I thought the author did really well:

  • Showcasing the psychological trauma of sexual violence. Both Noam and Dara had to deal with the repercussions of Lehrer's abuse, and the patterns they followed mirrored one another, just showing the awful reality of dealing with that kind of trauma. Noam half-hoping that Leher wouldn't hurt him, that he had actual feelings for him; Dara initially hating Noam for taking Leher's attention even though he was also being physically abused at that point ... it was sickening to read, but felt very real.
  • Showing the insidious nature of a predator's actions. Lehrer hurt and love-bombed and gaslit and manipulated his victims, and had very "logical" reasons why he wasn't wrong to do so - this is for your own good, we're so good together, you believe in the vision we created together, etc.
  • Portraying addition and mental health issues - Dara and Aimes' struggles with alcoholism (for very different reasons) also felt real, as did Dara's eating disorder.
  • The plot overall worked well, escalating the action as well as the sense of despair as the protagonists's attempts to find a solution kept failing. The twists throughout caught me in the guts  even if I suspected them, and the story beats all made sense from a structural perspective. Pacing-wise, this was a tightly-plotted novel that kept the suspense really well.

Beyond that, I'm struggling with this novel. I'm certain that showing that Lehrer's evil wasn't limited to his politics, but also his interpersonal relationships, feelings of supremacy, believing he was being persecuted and acting in the defense of the greater good, blah blah blah was important to understanding the urgency behind taking him down, but some of it felt gratuitous to me. The whump didn't always feel like it was giving me new information about how monstrous Lehrer is throughout the story, and there are only so many times you can underline a statement for emphasis before you rip through the page.

The finale of Lehrer finally being taken down was satisfying, but the epilogue element was ... VERY rosy. Like ... say what you will about Noam doing what he had to do to stay under Lehrer's radar, but he also definitely committed war crimes. He - and Dara, let's be real - assassinated so many people. It feels weak to excuse all their misdeeds - which NOAM SPENDS A QUATER OF THE BOOK HATING HIMSELF FOR - because they were in an admittedly terrible situation. It's just mentioned that Noam is in therapy and he'll have to work through that trauma at some point. But instead, let's focus on the two teenagers buying a house together and hanging out with their friends between college applications! It's a direct departure from how keenly the author wrote about the aftermath of trauma to kinda sweep the repercussions of this whole campaign under the rug.

I also kind of hated that both Dara and Noam lost their abilities thanks for Lehrer's abuse? Like, Dara mentioned several times throughout the story how he missed his abilities, felt less safe now that he couldn't read minds, and how telepathy brought him the understanding of Noam that made him fall in love. For Noam, technopothy was an extension of himself and gave him the ability to make change after a lifetime of feeling impotent. I could see the argument that Lehrer "cursed" them with their magic by spreading the virus and it was another form of abuse done to them - which I wholeheartedly agree - but they took that pain and made it into something they could count on. To me, that resolution just felt like Lehrer had taken yet another part of their souls away in addition to the damage he dealt by abusing them so viciously while they were in his care.

I have a feeling this duology will stick with me for a long time, in ways both good and bad.

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