Format: Hardcover, 416 pages
Release Date: August 25, 2020
Publisher: Simon Schuster Books
Source: Publisher
Genre: YA / Science Fiction / Dystopian
In the heart-pounding conclusion to the New York Times bestselling Diabolic series, the Empire teeters on the edge of destruction as rumors spread that Nemesis is still alive.
Three
years ago, Tyrus Domitrian shocked the galaxy by killing the woman he
swore to love forever. The woman for whom he upended the Empire. The
woman with whom he wanted to build a new and brighter future.
Now,
the once-idealistic heir apparent has become the cruel Emperor Tyrus,
wielding his authority with an iron fist, capable of destroying planets
with a single word, controlling all technology with a simple thought. He
has bent the Grandiloquy to their knees, and none has the power to
stand against him.
But there is a muttering among the Excess.
They say that Nemesis is not truly gone. They whisper of her shadow
spotted in distant star systems. They say that Nemesis lives. That she
will rise, and rally the people to topple the man who was once her
truest love—and is now her fiercest enemy.
The Nemesis, by author S.J. Kincaid, is the long-awaited series finale to the authors Diabolic trilogy. A story that took 3 years to complete. The story starts off by flashing backward and forward to cover the months since we last saw Nemesis, the most famous face and hair in the galaxy. Nemesis, who was engineered for murder but found love, is living a life of obscurity on Devil's Shade mining colony. It has been 3 years since her husband, Emperor Tyrus, drove a sword into her chest. If Tyrus can murder his own wife, nobody is safe.
5 months after she was killed, Neveni Sagnau, who joined with the Partisans, an organized resistance group of Excess against Tyrus and the Empire, tried to kill Nemesis after she saved Tyrus from an assassination attempt. It is better for everyone that the galaxy believe that she really is dead. Her only companion is her Diabolic brother Anguish who is suffering from an untreatable disease that has ravaged his body and there’s no real cure. Trouble soon arrives after people on Devil’s Shade recognize Nemesis and word gets back to Tyrus who sends Inquisitors to bring her back to.
Meanwhile, Tyrus has seriously gone crazy to the point of naming himself a God and using malignant space to destroy a supernova. He's also forced the elite of the Empire, the Grandiloquy, to believe everything he says and does even as stupid or bonkers as it may be, or he threatens them with destruction by malignant space. The problem is that there are those who believe that Nemesis is alive and not dead as the lunatic Emperor has proclaimed. So, when Nemesis does arrive, she has to come up with ways of escaping from any plans Tyrus has for her.
Nemesis has been struggling with her identity from the first time she had to become Donia, and I think she finally found the balance needed to live her best life. Nemesis's emotional journey is one of heart break, and scenes of lots of murder, mayhem, and bloodshed as she tried to send a message to Tyrus that she's not easily killable. Nemesis is, as always, a force to be reckoned with on her own, and once more does not hesitate to get her hands dirty to accomplish her own goals. I really liked her relationship with Anguish. The two have proven they are capable of human feelings including love.
One of my biggest pet peeves is that it took so long for this book to be released (3 years), that you really ought to go back and read the books as they were released or together if you can. I would have loved to have some sort of recap with a list of important characters like Neveni and Gaddic. As I get older, my memory isn't all that it's cracked up to be and I have to use notes to remind me of things that I would have otherwise missed. Nemesis has a tendency of having flashbacks to some other periods of time to cover things that happened in between books.
Nemesis dances back and forth between 'I must kill Tyrus' to 'I can't kill him, I still love him.' However, the ending really makes up for things that happen throughout the story. You can tell that Tyrus and Nemesis were made for each other even though Diabolics weren't supposed to be made to have feelings. Her love for Donia one again proves that she's not just something created in a lab without feelings. There’s a series of betrayals, of surprises and shocking revelations, and definite romance between Tyrus and Nemesis even after they realize they can't truly be together if what they originally intended for the Empire is going to happen. In case you weren’t aware, this series is based off I, Claudius, and the Roman Empire. Now you know!
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I HAD THE MOST FAMOUS face in the galaxy, but no one recognized me.
Today, there were eyes on me. I felt them.
My feet scuffed to a stop.
A split second later, another pair of footsteps halted.
I was being followed.
My steps resumed their smooth stride down the street. Interesting. It had been months since I’d faced a threat. In truth, I’d grown rather restless with boredom.
Misery was a constant of life on Devil’s Shade. In this most distant and hopeless of provinces, frustration boiled in every heart, leaked through every strident voice. Anger sought an outlet.
A lone young woman drew predators.
I could have avoided trouble, if I’d tried to blend in. I could have cut my long locks, worn large jackets, ducked my head… my size alone could have convinced hostile eyes that I was a decently muscled male. But something hard and vicious in me took pleasure in refusing to hide.
Instead I wore my long white-blond hair down. I’d made the color fashionable and saw it everywhere now, so why change it? When I walked down the street, I did not slouch. I made no effort whatsoever to avoid strangers’ attention. I met every stare with a stare.
They were just humans. Let them hide from me.
The only disguise that obscured me was the burn across the right side of my face. I had Neveni Sagnau to thank for that tiny scrap of anonymity. If I ever met her again, I meant to return the favor.
My steps slowed again so I could gauge how many pursued me. The subtle pause between the steps grinding to a halt…
Three.
Pity.
I’d been hoping for a challenge.
My mind rushed over the rules I’d laid out for myself: no attacking without provocation, and no chasing however much it entertained me. After all, it was never fair, and giving chase stoked a dark instinct in me, one I had resolved to battle.
I was a Diabolic engineered for murder, but I was not some crazed beast.
A rational being did not chase one who fled, nor could I assume anyone’s motives without evidence. Yet even as I reminded myself, I strained my ears for the shuffling of footsteps, and a pleasant excitement began to shiver through my limbs.
Stop. Do not indulge this, I told myself, and stopped walking.
It took several lingering, sloppy seconds for my pursuers to catch up to me.
The trio of shadowy men broke into jeering smiles as they fanned out around me. “You look lost,” called the largest of them.
I regarded them for a long moment.
My total lack of fear often frightened away those men who sniffed about for the vulnerable. Most heeded their instincts that something was “off” about me and escaped with their lives.
“Understand me,” I said quietly and clearly. “I don’t want to be followed. I am going to walk away and you will go in another direction. I will show no mercy on you otherwise.”
Then I turned my back to them. A dank alleyway presented itself, and I swerved into it. A dead end: perfect. I leaned against a wall to wait.
They followed.
“You looked better from behind,” called the scraggly-haired one, and the other two laughed. “What’s that on your face, a disease?”
I could have lied about my scars and said it was a disease. Skin-rot, maybe. It might have driven them away.
But I was not in the mood to be kind. I just waited.
“Answer me, you ugly bitch,” the man snarled. “I’m being nice to you.”
“Yeah, we’re real nice,” said the largest of them, elbowing the third, the quiet one hanging back. “Aren’t we?”
Uneasy laughter and a muttered, “Maybe we should go,” from the third.
“No, no, she’s got to tell us we’re nice,” said the scraggly one. “Actually, maybe thank us. Thank us for being nice to such an ugly bitch.”
The scraggly one crossed the distance to me and invaded my space, until I could smell his body odor, until I could see the pores on his nose, the missing teeth bared by his smile. He planted one palm on the wall next to my head, and then the other.
“Well? Gonna say anything now?” he said. “How about… now?”
Then he laid his hands on me.
I’d warned them.
I rammed an uppercut into his jaw, and his bones gave a satisfying crunch as his neck fractured, killing him instantly. Forward I shot, snagging the arms of both his companions before they could react, dragging them bodily closer to me.
“Who’s next?” I roared, my voice bestial.
Panic lit their faces. I crashed my head into the larger man’s face, then sank a roundhouse into the ribs of the other, hearing the splinter on impact.
The larger one had stumbled back from me, clutching his head, and now he stumbled over his dead friend. He gave a squawk of anger at the sight of him.… “Murph? Murph! She killed him! She…” His hand dove into his jacket and withdrew a blade that gleamed in the light.
It slashed at my face. Too easy. I caught his wrist. His eyes met mine, disbelief ablaze in his face as I slowly twisted his arm about to turn his blade back toward him. This man was so large, he’d likely never been overpowered in his life, and now he found himself at my mercy.
“Having second thoughts?” I whispered.
“You bitch—” he rasped, and sealed his fate.
Enough. I stopped holding back and stabbed the blade through his eye.
Then I turned on the third man, the most hesitant of the three, who was sprawled on the concrete of the alley.
“Well?” I spread my arms invitingly.
He gawked up at me, wild-eyed with terror, and he finally saw me.
My size. The white-blond of my hair. The dead men behind me, battered with my unnatural strength, murdered so easily with an unnatural skill…
“It’s you. It has to be you.” He said the words with a sort of wonder. He raised his shaking hand and gestured to something behind me.
I could guess what it was before I looked, but I did so anyway, just hoping he’d try to strike at my back and give me an excuse to kill him.
Sure enough, there was graffiti on the wall amid the indecipherable messages of the dispossessed, a single stark image of that cruel and lion-haired goddess, white fire seeming to scorch up around her hard, precise features fixed in promise of revenge.
Above and below her, that familiar phrase:
NEMESIS LIVES
The pathetic wretch was scurrying back, still on the ground, scooting like a crab across the alley.
“Don’t hurt me,” he said to me. “I didn’t want to do this. I swear to you, I didn’t. Please, Nemesis. Please.”
Yes. Now that he knew precisely what I was, he knew this was what he should have been doing from the start: begging me for his life. And I should not listen to him. He had seen me. He would give me away. He would endanger me.
I had promised no mercy.
He knew there was no escaping a Diabolic.
As I stalked after this weak, pitiful thing, a memory tickled at the back of my mind—another man, so many years ago, pleading with me to spare his life. I’d made one decision then as a young Diabolic desperate to escape a lifelong cage.
But I was not that frightened child now. I was not a trapped creature, at the mercy of others. There was no Matriarch here to make this decision in my stead, and I no longer believed there was a better, kinder life awaiting me if I but shed a few more drops of blood. No. All that lay down that path for me was more death, more ruin, more destruction.
His eyes were screwed shut, muscles braced, head bowed in surrender to fate.
“What is your name?” I said to him.
“Janus.”
“Janus what?”
“Janus Metz, Your Supremacy.”
My jaw clenched. Your Supremacy. I’d hoped never to hear that accursed honorific again. But since he’d used it, I seized his hair and tilted his face up to make him look at me. “You will not tell another soul you saw me.”
“No,” he said.
“Good, because I will remember your name, and if you are lying to me…” I ripped a handful of hair from his head, and held it up for him to see. “I have your scent, Janus Metz. Do you know Diabolics can track like bloodhounds?”
It was a lie. My sense of smell was as dull as a regular human’s. He couldn’t know that.
He nodded, wide-eyed. “I know I can’t run.”
“That’s very wise of you. You will take care of these bodies for me.”
“Of course!”
“And you will never do anything like this again: no victimizing people on the street.”
“I didn’t want to—”
“You were weak. You gave in to them. Never do that again. I will find out if you do.”
I would not find out, but I let him think so. He looked upon me with a strange, slack-jawed expression. “You truly are what they say you are,” he whispered. “You seek justice.” His eyes were actually shimmering with tears. “I will prove myself. I will deserve your mercy!”
I sighed and knocked him back to the ground with my heel, then stepped past him. But something made me turn back.
He was still sprawled on the ground. But over his head, on the rude brick, a pair of painted eyes glared into mine, their look accusatory.
I glared back. Nemesis the icon, the galaxy’s own hero—a legend who did not and never had truly existed.
The Excess had believed me dead. Not at my husband’s hands, but supposedly at the hands of the Partisans years before, during their attack on the Tigris.… It had been my attack, but blame was laid to them, for all the truths of the Empire were cloaked in lies. Apparently, the Nemesis slain in full view of the galaxy in the ball dome was a Partisan imposter.
Yes, I’d been dead as far as everyone knew, and in retrospect, I’d been better off for it. I could have lived a life of obscurity, forgotten, a short-lived and tragic memory.
Instead I’d set out to show myself alive by assassinating Tyrus—and then I’d truly ruined everything.
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