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inkdrunkmoth's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
I was lucky enough to get an eARC for Gearbreakers, one of my most anticipated reads of this year. And this book didn’t disappoint for this fan of mecha books.
This book follows Eris, a leader of a misfit gang of Gearbreakers and Sona, the prodigy of the academy who was assigned the highest level of Windup yet. But Sona has a secret. She’s an orphan of a massacre that fell on her town when she was young, the only person who made it out alive. She’s been living a lie, wanting to destroy the Academy and everything it stands for. So when Eris gets captured by Sona’s crew, she breaks Eris out and the two of them go back to the Gearbreakers. The problem - Sona is cybernetically enhanced, just like all pilots are. There is no hiding she is a Bot and the Gearbreakers hate her instantly. She and Eris are alienated for this and the two of them become closer because of this. But what happens when they find out the secret new Windup pieces are found, the archangel, by the Gearbreakers?
This book was honestly really amazing. It didn’t shy away from hard topics that one would expect in such a world. Trigger warnings for torture, death, murder, disfigurement, disphoria, gaslighting, fire, burning, explosives, mass murder, and so many others I’m sure I’m forgetting. This book is intense and isn’t for everyone because of this. The reader is often left asking ‘what?!’ after yet another insane scene. This book throws all the punches and I loved it for it.
My only complaints are that it did come across copy in places. For starters, Sona speaks differently from the others, using no shortened phrases. Such as ‘do not’ instead of ‘don’t’ and so on. This does make a lot of the conversations hard to find their pace and rhythm for the reader. Another thing is that it took me a bit to figure out exactly what was happening, simply because I wasn’t sure how to digest what I was reading. It took me far too long to figure out how Eris’s and Jenny’s gloves worked. I think that it could have been explained just a little better or maybe this book is just too smart for me (which I honestly would 100% believe). It’s the ONLY reason this book isn’t 5 stars. Because I have to say, this book was insanely exciting and left me reading late into the night, desperate to know what happened next. This book sticks with you, the characters stick with you and the end will leave you screaming because you can’t believe what's happening. You know why it’s happening, but yet you can’t believe that it’s happening at all.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Murder, Death, and Torture
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