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dandelionsteph's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
3.25
I believe it was on Page 149 that I nearly gave up on this book due to its purple prose-y, bodice-ripper-like description of Donavan making out with Anya. They kissed before, and I thought it was unsettling, unoriginal and unnecessary, but I didn't think it would get worse. Thankfully, it doesn't get worse after Page 149. If this level of disconcertingly physical romance/aged-down sexual elements was properly warned for in the book's blurb, I think I would have avoided reading this book. I can only hope the sequel doesn't make the same mistake. I was so disappointed than Anya had to be a love/lust interest. The most important female characters to the plot and page space are Donovan's mother and Anya, and with the way one of Donovon's fellow soldiers-in-erze makes sexually-suggestive drawings, I get the impression that this book would very well have described Donovan's mother in narration or in character opinion in a sexualized way if she wasn't, well, Donovan's mother.
The sexual elements and profanity in this work are so egregious and unjustifiable that whenever they occur, I feel like sighing with disappointment. It actually tones down the mature feel of this work by making it feel like a libidinous 14-year-old boy is playing dress-up at what being "mature" is like. Brandon Mull's Beyonders was dark, complex and mature, and it didn't need to use sexual elements or profanity (or at the very least not with the same range and frequency as this book).
The sexual elements and profanity in this work are so egregious and unjustifiable that whenever they occur, I feel like sighing with disappointment. It actually tones down the mature feel of this work by making it feel like a libidinous 14-year-old boy is playing dress-up at what being "mature" is like. Brandon Mull's Beyonders was dark, complex and mature, and it didn't need to use sexual elements or profanity (or at the very least not with the same range and frequency as this book).
Content Warnings
Graphic: Blood, Violence, Murder, and War
Moderate: Xenophobia, Sexual content, Colonisation, Abandonment, Body shaming, Confinement, and Medical content
Minor: Animal cruelty, Medical trauma, Child death, Racial slurs, Drug use, and Sexual harassment
The "xenophobia" and "racial slurs" are in sci-fi equivalents, through the zhree being called "shrooms" by humans resisting them, and the humans enhanced with zhree biotechnologies being called "zebrahands" and dehumanized by Max's propaganda. The child death is only a few sentences' worth of a mention, from the kid of a secondary character who died long before this story begins, due to a lethal exocel integration failure. The animal cruelty consists of the exocel experiments on the monkeys in Dr. Nakada's lab, although, other than being grotesque to look at, they don't seem to be suffering. The medical trauma was included for thoroughness's sake, because it takes a while for exocel integration to take, and in the meantime it is painful and horrible. The actual process of receiving the treatment is done under anesthesia in a sci-fi process. The drug use is use of cigarettes by one character. Colonization, medical content, and body shaming are all in sci-fi contexts not necessarily equivalent to real-life ones.
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