Australian Indie Book Series called: Revolt. Read the first 2 books but unsure if I'll read the 3rd when it comes out.
It's hard describe the feelings and overall verdict. There's two sides to the series. One is really, really good and other is well, not. It's either a sci-fi sport story about the main characters being able to finally enter the sport late and a lot of personal conflicts that come with that, and the other is side is a lore based sci-fi about a rebellious gang known as the Revolt taking over the world from the shadows abusing the fractured state of the rebuild.
The sports side is the really good part. It uses the characters dynamics well to sell you on the bloody fights the happen frequently, I find myself rooting for the POV character at any given time to win constantly cause I end up being invested in what they are personally going through. It plays really well in contrast too with some great mixing of drama and comedy as well as some really tough hard hitting emotional stuff that feels earned with how interesting they make the character dynamics. There's one character who is just the biggest pompous 🤬 who would hateable in most stories but in the context of the book, I love him. His friends treat him like a wild animal who needs to be constantly yanked on his chain when he goes overboard and his friendship forming with the main character after they originally hated each other is really great to see develop, they play off each other so well.
The lore side is really boring and unnecessarily cruel, Revolt have no interesting characters to speak of and feels like its just dragging with vagueness to pretend something interesting is happening and the POV character that ends up getting dragged in this mess just get tortured constantly that serves nothing to his character. It's not even the Revolt torturing this character, the Revolt only want to capture him (for reasons not explained) the narrative is just making him do it to himself in a desparate attempt to escape.
Eventually at the end of the 2nd Book, some details of the lore side intersect with the sports side and it just begins to weigh it all down so I don't think I'll proceed further.
EDIT: Thinking more about it, theres still enough nice and interesting details to keep me going and the divide is still fascinating to dissect so I will read Part 3
