So it should not be that much of a surprise that every time somebody steps up to her and starts giving her orders and generally acting dominant Mackenzie has not the slightest idea what to do. Simply because she missed out 9 years of growing up where children gradually work out such things.
And it makes perfect sense that she is contrary and argumentative only with minor issues, because those are exactly the ones that nobody is expressing any position of authority over. Her outbursts are signs of a much belated emotional puberty. She is acting childish and immature much of the time because her emotional development pretty much got frozen by her grandmother somewhere between the age of 9 and 14.

Any excitement in the story has to come, for the foreseeable future, from the zany antics of Steff and Sooni, and any other secondary figure.

Again, not expecting Mackenzie to become some sort of one liner spouting two dimensional anti hero. I do however expect that after two and a half years of reading, we have some development that has any effect on anyone’s daily life more than once every trilogies worth of text.

I love parts of this story, the world setting, races, history and characters are all very unique and make the story worthwhile on their own. But as you said, any true control and development would take Mack years if she develops at her current rate. Which would mean it’s never likely to be written given this series pacing.

All we can really hope for from Mack is instant reactions to immediate threats, which may cause her to reach out of her repressed state. And given the amount of opposition Mack faces already (mermaids, Mack daddy, Mercy etc) I’m sure further opportunities for ‘my description of interesting’ lie ahead.

Eri