Rebel's Creed

Just like with the first book in this series, I both enjoyed it and was disappointed.

The good thing about this story is the idea and the plot of it. I like where things are going and I want to know more.

However, the execution is definitely subpar.

The world building was choppy, incomplete and often vague. After reading two books (one of which a novella, granted) I still have no clarity about the political system, the recent history or even the basic geography of this world. There are mentions of some different nations and races but it seems mostly like an afterthought.

The flow of the story was very messy. For example, the author would deliver crucial information by simply telling us what happened to character A, even though we followed said character at that time and this was never even hinted at. It felt like a plot convenience developed on the spot to move the story. But there has to be a set up for this type of thing in order for it to work well. One example that comes to mind is Chapman's supposed overuse of Yu'ib medicine. We followed him for months and never got a mention that Yu'ib even had medicine, and all of a sudden - here it is, he's been relying on it too much, and the strain of it is weighing on him.
The author would often rely on characters to dump exposition in order to “build back story”, again without any prior hint. Flip: "Holden, since I met you, you've been a mess. The minute we met you moved in with me for a month" Yeah, I believe Holden knows that he moved in with Flip for a month. So this is all done for our benefit , which makes it sound unnatural.

Storytelling was quite rushed, which caused the book feel more like a YA novel. And that made the sudden and frequent appearance of super gory scenes, which bordered and often crossed the border into body horror, a bit startling. Not to mention the one mega awkward sex scene.

The writing style is really lacking. Rather often, you'd run into a sentence that is borderline nonsensical (and some that are truly so). There were errors, missed words (“Holden [felt a] pang of shame”) and sometimes just plain bad prose (“His eyes lit on the open window. It was open.”) .
On top of that, the narrative switched between third person limited and third person omniscient point of view randomly (sometimes in the same chapter) which really pulled me out of the story.
Save to say, the book would've really benefitted from a more thorough editing.

But the worst thing, by far, was the dialog. It was so bad and sounded so unnatural, I had to re-read certain passages a few times to try and figure out what the characters mean and how they got there.

Despite all the things I didn't like, I still think the idea behind the story and where it is going is quite interesting, so I will probably read the next book in the series and hope for a much needed improvement in the writing of this author.