Protagonist Kayla Reinumon is constantly thrust into distressing and perilous situations, such as being onboard a ship that is subsequently propelled into a minefield of space debris, or coming face to face with the one person who betrayed her people\u2019s trust.<\/p>\n
But never once does she descend into panic and forget her one goal \u2013 to protect her il\u2019raar, her last surviving kin in the wake of a massacre that takes place on her home planet \u2013 and the only way to do that is to win the eponymous Empress Game tournament.<\/p>\n
This description may seem to be slightly shallow at first, as the premise depicts a universe in which women are set against one another in arranged fights, which sounds like some kind of sadistic playground for the men or a Hunger Games<\/strong><\/em> copycat. But The Empress Game<\/strong><\/em> truly progresses beyond just the overused fight-to-survive female protagonist model in every way.<\/p>\n Never once do any of the women in the story have to grovel under the other gender; they are courageous, constantly evaluating their circumstances, decisive, strong in the face of danger, and empowered as a consequence of their training for the approaching Games.<\/p>\n It turns out that there\u2019s a lot more to The Empress Game<\/strong><\/em> than just planets, space and fight scenes too. Rhonda Mason\u2019s space opera debut already reads like a well-established series, despite being the first instalment \u2013 its universe is vast and detailed, featuring a convincing history and solid political background of various ruling councils.<\/p>\n This works in The Empress Game<\/strong><\/em>\u2019s favour, alongside jaw-droppingly diverse locations and hyper-advanced technology dotted throughout, and there is a lot of unexpected depth to the characters as well.<\/p>\n Mason works wonders with these elements and the pacing, slowly weaving layer after layer into the storyline so that there is never a dull moment. Ultimately, this makes for a sincere, refreshing and page-turning first foray into the world that Mason has created.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Hunger games meets space opera in The Empres Games<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":37,"featured_media":76970,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"quote","meta":{"MSN_Categories":"Uncategorized","MSN_Publish_Option":false,"MSN_Is_Local_News":false,"MSN_Is_AIAC_Included":"Empty","MSN_Location":"[]","MSN_Add_Feature_Img_On_Top_Of_Post":false,"MSN_Has_Custom_Author":false,"MSN_Custom_Author":"","MSN_Has_Custom_Canonical_Url":false,"MSN_Custom_Canonical_Url":""},"categories":[1624,8],"tags":[4536,4537],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/Empress-Game.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76969"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/37"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76969"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76969\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/76970"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76969"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}