Navigating the stars
Maria V. Snyder
Lyra is sick of leaving behind all her friends. She’s too young to make her own decisions, but every time her parents move to a new planet to continue their research, she says goodbye forever. The terracotta warriors – the subject of her parents’ research – litter nearby planets, but nobody has any clue why they’re there, or how they were made. When the entire population of a warrior planet is wiped out, Lyra realises she has much bigger issues.
Wow. This book was absolutely beautiful. The author clearly put a lot of time into planning the book and making sure that everything linked nicely. Events early in the book became important later on, and it felt like every word I read had a purpose for being there. Initially, I wasn’t too excited about the beginning of the book being based around Lyra saying goodbye to her friends, but it ended up being a great introduction to Lyra, and the characters involved were important to the story, so it was well worth the initial delay in the action.
The relationships and characters in the book were amazing. Even neglecting the fantasy/sci-fi elements of the story, it was wonderful, and more than interesting. I felt invested not only in the characters, but in their relationships, and at times I felt heartbroken along with them. I felt like the characters were my friends, and at the end of the book I was sad to say goodbye.
The book wasn’t afraid of commitment, which made everything so much more exciting and adrenaline-packed. Right from the beginning, it was clear that the author would not shy away from saying goodbye to characters permanently, so when people were in danger, I was legitimately scared for them. I went through so much emotional turmoil reading this book, as I experienced the characters’ ups and downs along with them. It was an amazing book, and I’m already itching to get my hands on the sequel.
It’s a novella, so it won’t take you long to read at all. Sanderson still manages to fully realise his characters and build a vivid world within a world for the reader to look at. The premise itself is rather mind-bending and I tried not to think about it too hard. You can’t change the past… but you can view it and hope you don’t change it too significantly.
Oh ouch! Those twists! Poor Ophelia. All I could think of was Shakespeare’s Hamlet, where the hapless Ophelia drowns herself. In comparison, this Ophelia is pretty spunky! I think she is quite brave for surviving in that toxic environment.
Wow, this novel’s first half was incredibly slow. I did like the elements of problem solving, and that redeemed the novel somewhat. Then again, I’m sorry, but Sato’s pensive and rude emotional state did nothing for me. And almost meeting a sticky end didn’t even improve him! He didn’t feel like a real person. In fact, the whole novel was so plot based that we didn’t see any character development at all. Except for Tick but that was all described in terms of him finally standing up to the school Bully – not anything more important. And that stupid scarf! Ugh. The author harped back to it, but it turns out that no-one actually cares (surprise surprise).
I found myself quite confused a lot of the time and I struggled to follow the point of the novel. The blurb led me to believe that it was all about Evie and Hunter, but in fact it focussed just as much on Ono/Aurio and the struggle of wills. I was left feeling confused about the aim of the novel. Did this novel want me to sympathise with Evie and conclude that the strand was evil? Or did it ask me to set that aside and see the positives of the strand? I’d lean towards the former, but I couldn’t work out why it was relevant to me (despite the maps suggesting that this was a future world of our own).
This is a usual good-quality Garth Nix novel that didn’t disappoint me. The main character Khemri certainly develops as a character, and it is interesting to see his progression/regression from Prince to person. Basically Khemri is ripped away from everything that is familiar, and then thrust into a world that not only does he have faulty information about, but also is out to kill him. The ending really came as a surprise to me. Wow!
This is a low key science fiction novel that is easy to read, with not too much jargon or assumed knowledge. I found myself slipping effortlessly into the pages and refusing to come out again. The parts of physics and basic explanations of the Flow made my eyes glaze over a little, but I didn’t need to completely skip those sections to keep my interest!
This innovative magic system – I could have had more! The basis was spheres – burn a Ruby Red one, have straight teeth, or Aqua ones so that you can sleep whenever you need. The price point is all you need to worry about to do. In the manner of Brandon Sanderson, I wished there had been an index at the end of the novel to remind me what each of the spheres burned did to each person. Then I could have flipped back and forth as I wanted.