Title: Zenith by Sasha Alsberg and Lindsay Cummings
Pages: 512
Published by: Harlequin Teen
Publication date: 11th January 2018
Genre: Science Fiction
Format: eBook
Amazon UK – Waterstones
Synopsis:
Most know Androma Racella as the Bloody Baroness, a powerful mercenary whose reign of terror stretches across the Mirabel Galaxy. To those aboard her glass starship, Marauder, however, she’s just Andi, their friend and fearless leader.
But when a routine mission goes awry, the Marauder‘s all-girl crew is tested as they find themselves in a treacherous situation and at the mercy of a sadistic bounty hunter from Andi’s past.
Meanwhile, across the galaxy, a ruthless ruler waits in the shadows of the planet Xen Ptera, biding her time to exact revenge for the destruction of her people. The pieces of her deadly plan are about to fall into place, unleashing a plot that will tear Mirabel in two.
Andi and her crew embark on a dangerous, soul-testing journey that could restore order to their ship or just as easily start a war that will devour worlds. As the Marauder hurtles toward the unknown, and Mirabel hangs in the balance, the only certainty is that in a galaxy run on lies and illusion, no one can be trusted.
My review:
Thank you to NetGalley for a free digital copy of this book in exchange for an honest view.
I did not like how much originality this book lacked. It felt like a terrible version of Guardians of the Galaxy. First up, we have Rocket Racoon who likes making explosions and he loves guns. In Zenith, we have Gilly who is 13 years old and she likes making explosions and loves guns. Then we have Breck who is really tall, is always by Gilly’s side and is really muscular. To me this felt like a combination of both Groot and Drax. Lastly, we have Lira who is bald and has blue skin. No surprise that this reminded me of Nebula, who is also bald and has blue skin. Not really seeing any originality to these characters if I’m honest. Plus people also said Andi is like a copy and paste version of the main character in Throne of Glass? Haven’t read that series so can’t say if this is true or not but it wouldn’t surprise me if it was.
Then we have the very confusing plot. I feel like you’ll have a hard time understanding this book if you’re not Sasha or Lindsay because the lack of explanation for anything is infuriating. They mention “Moon Chew” several times and how it is bad for you and how it can kill you. Why? I have no idea. They didn’t bother explaining it. Then they love dropping names of starships without explaining what this starship is so you’re left completely clueless as to what is going on. They also drop all these planet names like Xen Pterran which I was still having problems with over halfway through the book. I think there was some kind of war and Xen Pterran was left to die basically? No one cared about them? So now the Queen of that planet wants revenge? This plot is honestly all over the place as there are so many different things happening.
I really did not have a clue what all these planets were and what all these different systems were. Too many things were going on in this book that I just felt completely overwhelmed and disorientated. With the characters we have Andi’s story, Lira’s story, Nor’s story, Valen’s story and Dex’s story. They all have their own POVs which to me is way too many characters for me to care about. It was just too confusing and I ended up forgetting characters. I’d come to Nor’s story and be like who are you again? We also have a POV for Nor’s mother which are set in the past. This just completely confused me and I was like I don’t really care about you? I kept forgetting why she was so relevant to the story.
The lack of pacing in this book is very annoying because they rush to get loads of things out and basically word vomit at the start of the book. But then they take their sweet time with other plots like Andi and Dex’s past and how they were lovers but now they hate each other. Like Andi and Dex spend every chapter mentioning their past and it got to the point that I just didn’t care. I just did not care and wanted something else to happen.
Considering Andi is known as the Bloody Baroness and is supposed to be feared by everyone, she was the most boring character. I found this book had a lot of telling and not a lot of showing. You were constantly told how much of a badass Andi is but she spends the whole book mourning for the deaths of people she has killed. I think they need to look up the definition of “badass” because Andi is not one. She is like a baby that needs coddling. I don’t know what the “Bloody Baroness” is but it’s not Andi. Like if you are promising this book has a badass main character, you kind of need to deliver on that. They did not deliver. Andi was super boring and not scary at all. I found it really funny how she complained about Dex always being able to find her on the ship and how she couldn’t escape him. I was thinking surely you should know that he can always find you because you have a glass starship??? Plus she gloats about how impenetrable her glass starship is but when they are getting shot at she has metal shields slide down to protect the glass??? But it’s impenetrable, no? Why do you need metal shields??? One of many things that didn’t make sense in this story.
The writing is not great. It’s actually very bad in some places. There is a lot of flowery language being used but it’s not great, it’s actually very awkward and stilted. I felt like Sasha and Lindsay were trying too hard to impress the reader and just trying to show off how great their writing was when it really wasn’t. It just doesn’t feel natural at all and I just wanted to tell them to be themselves and relax because the writing was stressing me out. The dialogue between the characters as well was really bad. Their conversations were just so weird and felt so forced at times.
This book was way too long. It definitely did not need to be over 500 pages. I got to 250 and wanted it to be over. To me it felt like the end of book one and then book two would pick up where they left of. But instead they decided to make this book over 500 pages (Why?) and make nothing happening for the rest of the book. It was so boring and I felt like I was just forcing myself to read it. Then towards the end of the book it suddenly changed and I felt like I’d picked up the second book in the series? I was just like what is happening? I felt completely thrown. Everything changes and it’s so strange. It kind of felt like Andi was put to one side and Nor was brought in the spotlight. I feel like Andi’s story and Nor’s story completely clash. It felt like they didn’t even belong in the same book. Like Sasha and Lindsay had picked one character from one story and a second character from another story and just put them in the same book. It didn’t work for me at all.
What really irked me was this book has 98 chapters which to me just seems so ridiculous. They have that many characters and POVs being thrown at the reader that they need 98 chapters. To me this says they immediately have too many characters in this book. I don’t want to read a book with 98 chapters because I will get confused and angry. Which is what happened with this book.
So overall, this book was not great. I feel like Sasha and Lindsay just completely rushed this book and wanted to get it out to the world as soon as possible. Possibly Sasha’s excitement for publishing her first book made her completely forget that she needs to explain the story to the reader. She can’t just assume they will know what is going on and in this book, it’s written like they assume you automatically know what is going on. No, you need to explain things to me and the other people reading this book. I think it should have gone through way more editing and they should have thought it through more before publishing it. It’s a very complicated story, lots of things lack explanation so you are left feeling very confused. I stand by what I said earlier: You will have a hard time understanding this book if you are not Sasha or Lindsay. I don’t think I will be continuing this series because I honestly do not care enough about the characters and it was too confusing for me to follow.
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