Title: Zodiac
Author: Romina Russell
Series Status: 1st book in the Zodiac series
# of pages: 319
My rating: 3.5/5 stars
At the dawn of time, there were 13 Houses in the Zodiac Galaxy. Now only 12 remain….
Rhoma Grace is a 16-year-old student from House Cancer with an unusual way of reading the stars. While her classmates use measurements to make accurate astrological predictions, Rho can’t solve for ‘x’ to save her life—so instead, she looks up at the night sky and makes up stories.
When a violent blast strikes the moons of Cancer, sending its ocean planet off-kilter and killing thousands of citizens—including its beloved Guardian—Rho is more surprised than anyone when she is named the House’s new leader. But, a true Cancerian who loves her home fiercely and will protect her people no matter what, Rho accepts.
Then, when more Houses fall victim to freak weather catastrophes, Rho starts seeing a pattern in the stars. She suspects Ophiuchus—the exiled 13th Guardian of Zodiac legend—has returned to exact his revenge across the Galaxy. Now Rho—along with Hysan Dax, a young envoy from House Libra, and Mathias, her guide and a member of her Royal Guard—must travel through the Zodiac to warn the other Guardians.
But who will believe anything this young novice says? Whom can Rho trust in a universe defined by differences? And how can she convince twelve worlds to unite as one Zodiac?
Embark on a dazzling journey with ZODIAC, the first novel in an epic sci-fi-meets-high-fantasy series set in a galaxy inspired by the astrological signs.
As you know I’m taking part in the #zodiacbooks readathon and I finished the first book! This readathon was perfect to get me to finally pick up this book and I’m excited to continue the series.
Besides the beautiful covers one of the things that immediately drew me into this story was the unique setting. I was really intrigued by the whole zodiac signs and constellations idea and loved getting to see this world planned out. This was something that I really liked because I don’t think I’ve read any other book about zodiac signs and I honestly knew little to nothing about them before starting this book. What I really liked about this setting was that it was interesting to see how each sign has specific traits but that they are obviously not unique to only that sign. This story really incorporated this in an interesting and unique way that made me really excited.
One thing that I was not the biggest fan of was the main character. While I admired her determination and her overall want to do good for her people I felt like she was slightly naive and underdeveloped. I have no clue what I would do if I was in her place but she felt so one dimensional that I couldn’t decide if some of her decisions went with her character or not. So even though I felt she was not fully developed I really enjoyed her interactions with the other characters and thought they placed some ground work for future development with her.
I do also feel like the pacing was slightly erratic at the beginning but it quickly was solved and made the story easier to dive into. This was probably helped by Russell’s writing style which I feel like gave the story an added benefit even if it didn’t help develop the plot. Her writing is simplistic yet not lazy and it made me excited to continue and easy to fly through this read.
Along with the pacing that had mixed feelings for me I also had some mixed feelings about the romance. I’m normally fine with romance in YA as long as it isn’t overdone but this book does contain the classic love triangle Trope and while it doesn’t necessarily dominate the story it is a pretty big factor for parts of it. I don’t think I minded the love triangle so much because of the lack of development for the main character but I think that with the insane plot that was going on there was no need to add in this romance for tension. That being said the positive of the triangle was that for the two love interests it did bring in some pretty necessary development and got me more connected to the two of them which is pretty important.
Overall this book was pretty interesting and I’m excited to continue the next series and see where it goes.
3.5 stars
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