If I had a nickel for every sci-fi/fantasy series I read that spends the entire first book building up romantic tension between two women before ending with one of them sacrificing herself to allow the other to obtain ultimate power and a high ranking position within the empire that rules their world, but in the sequel she can’t even use that power properly because she’s too busy processing her grief in increasingly self-destructive ways up to and including keeping her dead lover’s personality sealed away in a part of her brain that she doesn’t know how to access I’d have two nickels
