Win, Vera Nazarian

The Games are Forever!
It’s one thing to Qualify and Compete…
Now she must Win.

Gwen Lark, nerd, geek, and awkward smart girl, is among the lucky ones. She’s one of several million teenage refugees to escape the extinction-level asteroid barreling towards Earth and reach the ancient colony planet of Atlantis.

But Atlantis is a strange new world with higher gravity and a blazing white sun, where nothing is as expected. The new arrivals from Earth will now belong to the majority class of non-citizens who face a lifetime of hard work and limited rights.

To make matters worse, Gwen’s rare and powerful talent, her Logos voice, is viewed as a potential weapon to be exploited by the Imperator, as well as a threat to the Kassiopei Imperial Dynasty and its uncompromising control over the people of Atlantis.

A last-minute heartbreak prior to arrival turns to joy, when Gwen receives a declaration of love from an unexpected source. The Wedding date is set, but before she can be joined with her true love, she is forced to compete in the brutal and deadly Games of the Atlantis Grail to save herself, her family, friends, and everything she cares about. Once again, her intelligence, quick thinking skills, resilience, and creativity are challenged to the breaking point.

The Games are monumental, intricate, lethal… and the Games are Forever.

This time Gwen must fight and figure her way through the most difficult and sophisticated contest she has ever faced. Terrifying Ordeals and impossible Challenges, ruthless skilled Competitors, vicious secret assassins, and dubious teammates she must work with but cannot trust, are just the beginning…

Meanwhile, as the Games rage, the fate of two worlds is at stake as a new alien threat looms over Earth and Atlantis.

But Gwen Lark has a secret weapon of her own. It’s not her Logos voice and its untapped power to control orichalcum technology and perpetuate change.

It is Gwen herself.

This book may be in great need for trimming, but I just can’t seem to get enough of it. I’m nearly obsessed with the series, particularly Gwen Lark and her journey through space, with her battles for survival and ensuring that her family doesn’t… I don’t know, die in the impact of the giant asteroid heading for Earth?

Gwen and her siblings have qualified for the seats on the Atlanteans’ rescue ships, and they competed for the right to be called cadets once they reach Atlantis. But when the ships finally make it to their designation, Gwen isn’t done being tested. What started as an impossible dream come true quickly turns to a death sentence and in a rather ironic way, Gwen is preparing once more for the games she’d had her heart set on since the end of qualifications.

Let’s get the technical things out of the way. It’s a 3-star rating for me because a lot of things could’ve been trimmed, and there was a lot of repetition, both in the monologue and dialogue. There’s only so much I can take before it gets tempting to skip it all, you know? And the first trial in the Atlantis Grail reminded me way too much of the Hunger Games. Personally, I don’t like action scenes too much, and THG was a do-it-once and never again kinda thing for me. And the first trial was the longest out of the others.

The second one, however, felt just like all the reasons why I love the Atlantis Grail series, so it was really just the first trial that was all fighting and conniving killings. I loved the rest of the obstacles Gwen had to overcome, how clever some of the problem-solving was. It’s one of the things I love about Gwen. She was still extremely dense, but she seemed to check herself more in this book (thank God) and aside from the lovey-dovey bits with her hunk of a man, I otherwise loved everything she did. The supporting characters were pretty cool, there enough to count but not so much that it slowed anything down. The ending is a cruel, cruel cliffhanger. Or a completely normal one and I’m just butt hurt that I don’t have the next book in my possession. Ugh, I seriously need the fourth book now. I don’t even want to imagine how long it’ll take.

So book three gives us exactly what we were looking forward to, and more… including that ending (yes I am still sour about it). It’s a definite recommend. You MUST check out this series. I suspect the author puts a piece of her soul in this or something because I honestly cannot enjoy a book that’s got a lot of errors and repetition, but for whatever reason, I couldn’t get enough of Lark. I’m pretty sure it’s one of my forever obsessions.

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