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emkreads's review
3.0
3.5 stars
Don't get me wrong, this book was great. I really enjoyed reading it and I loved the writing, but I guess I was so hyped to read this that I just felt a little let down by it..? I needed to set it aside for almost 6 months before telling myself "alright, finish it" and I really wanna readu the sequel but I don't know, this was not what I thought it would be and I found it so complicated but good at the same time..? I'm just confused about this book I guess
Don't get me wrong, this book was great. I really enjoyed reading it and I loved the writing, but I guess I was so hyped to read this that I just felt a little let down by it..? I needed to set it aside for almost 6 months before telling myself "alright, finish it" and I really wanna readu the sequel but I don't know, this was not what I thought it would be and I found it so complicated but good at the same time..? I'm just confused about this book I guess
lielos99's review
5.0
I just realized i never reviewes this book and am amending that now. Enjoyed it quite ablot, it’s been a while so i didnt remember every detail, but it was quite clean content wise for the most part (don’t remember how much, but some cussing) So many creative and new characters/races. I am so excited to see where it goes!
caughtbetweenpages's review
adventurous
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.5
I knew if I was ever going to read this book it would have to be after the hype for it died down, because having a neutral opinion when the trend is to be performatively low- or high-regarding of a thing is seen as dishonest. And that's what my assessment of Zenith is: completely neutral.
Regarding characters, I found Andi to be pretty flat. She was definitely at her best with her crew, Lira, Breck, and Gilly. While Breck was mostly Just There and Gilly was an eye-rollingly precocious murder-brat, Lira was a rather well rounded character in her own right, with a complex backstory and bonds outside of the crew which (if allowed to hold more conflict and take up more space in the narrative) could have been quite interesting. But the four of them together had an organic chemistry. Did it make sense in terms of them being Hardened Space Pirates? No. (But neither does the Night Court in ACOTAR--everyone loves to have the veneer of badassery without doing anything to back it up in books like this, and I just have to make my peace with it). Andi was at her worst with Dex, the love interest so bland that I truly have nothing to say about him. The dialogue throughout the book was stilted, but when it was an Andi and Dex scene it became so... scripted feeling? Performative? Beyond stiff. There was absolutely zero chemistry between them and I kind of wish he hadn't been part of the story at all.
Who else is of note... Andi's parents are flat characters sans substance, the General is slimy... I did like Nor and her mother, in terms of making things happen. Nor actually lives up to her reputation, though I wish the moments of humanity and anxiety about her rule we saw actually came to more fruition. And her mom is fascinating, though the rape she does to the General by mind controlling him into impregnating her with Valen was awful. I wish there'd been a TW for that, and I worry that it wasn't warned about because it was a woman committing it against a man. Still, the two of them were interesting. Valen was too, and while I understand to some degree the criticism of his repeated line, it's made very clear that that's a thing he's holding on to to keep from losing his identity while being tortured in prison. If you're fine with Arya Stark having a list of people she wants to kill that she repeats every night but not this, consider that your critique is maybe with the authors and not the literary device of repetition (it DOES happen too often on one page to be ok, I will admit).
I think the worldbuilding was rather thin. Part of this may be that the novel was going to be a serialized self-pub thing, and then it was speed written in like 2 months before being put on a crashed publishing schedule. Your plot and characters mustn't fall flat, so if you have to put anything by the wayside, I get why instinct would be to ditch the world, but in SFF especially that's a BAD IDEA. I found the book to be bloated at the length it was, but if there'd been less repetitiveness between Andi and Dex's arguments or Andi moping about the killing she's pretty willingly done, there'd have been room freed up to expand on the world and earn this page count. As it stands, this could've been 200 pages shorter, easy. But it did read fast. The book was not unenjoyable for the flimsiness of the setting; the world not enriching the story didn't make it egregious (harping on moon chew when it's clearly a chewing tobacco corollary is worse reviewing than writing moon chew is writing, actually), and I found the scene-setting to be fairly vivid and colorful overall, if, again, flat in terms of narrative utility and resonance. Pretty set dressing, if you will.
This did unfortunately mean the plot, which centered on the aftermath of an intergalactic conflict, was built on shaky ground. This would normally require higher than average levels of suspension of disbelief (why are each of these planets ruled by One Guy? Why are these rulers so universally Bad At Their Jobs any why are some of them beefing with teenagers? How can space pirates be both "just smugglers looking for the next job to put enough fuel in their ship to get them to their next gig" and also "hardened criminals leaving a galaxy of blood behind them"? And how can just 4 girls man an entire spaceship if they're the latter sort, with only a captain, a pilot, and two gunners as the crew? At least that last fact is why it's so painfully easy to take them over...). However, because the worldbuilding was so flimsy, and thus the contradictions in character and plot specific points were so ubiquitous as to be expected (and thus ignorable), that actually fell by the wayside. Much like Sarah J Maas's Throne of Glass, this was very much book candy: no substance, all aesthetics.
And I say SJM specifically; from the glass spaceship (yes, like the glass castle) to the white blonde sword-wielding (yes, swords in space against guns) trust-me-i'm-baddass space pirate protagonist (yes, like the white blonde sword-wielding trust-me-i'm-baddass king's assassin protagonist), to the paper thin world and plot, to the... well, the frankly unbelievable (given we're in space and there's aliens everywhere) cishet whiteness of it all, Zenith is remarkably like ToG. I think if people weren't ready to scrutinize it so deeply given the YouTube success of one of the authors, the same audience that got their start in reading fantasy with TOG and love it would've liked Zenith, too. A little less, perhaps, because Zenith suffers, like Fourth Wing does, from the authors clearly being aware of SJM's success and perhaps parroting it a little too closely. But the quality is pretty comparable, both in terms of overarching craft structure and in terms of writing skill. As I said, book candy.
Will I be continuing on? ...maybe? Certainly not any time soon. But I am a completionist, and it's only a duology, so I just might. I read all of ToG after all, and this is a much smaller lift. Never say never.
Regarding characters, I found Andi to be pretty flat. She was definitely at her best with her crew, Lira, Breck, and Gilly. While Breck was mostly Just There and Gilly was an eye-rollingly precocious murder-brat, Lira was a rather well rounded character in her own right, with a complex backstory and bonds outside of the crew which (if allowed to hold more conflict and take up more space in the narrative) could have been quite interesting. But the four of them together had an organic chemistry. Did it make sense in terms of them being Hardened Space Pirates? No. (But neither does the Night Court in ACOTAR--everyone loves to have the veneer of badassery without doing anything to back it up in books like this, and I just have to make my peace with it). Andi was at her worst with Dex, the love interest so bland that I truly have nothing to say about him. The dialogue throughout the book was stilted, but when it was an Andi and Dex scene it became so... scripted feeling? Performative? Beyond stiff. There was absolutely zero chemistry between them and I kind of wish he hadn't been part of the story at all.
Who else is of note... Andi's parents are flat characters sans substance, the General is slimy... I did like Nor and her mother, in terms of making things happen. Nor actually lives up to her reputation, though I wish the moments of humanity and anxiety about her rule we saw actually came to more fruition. And her mom is fascinating, though the rape she does to
I think the worldbuilding was rather thin. Part of this may be that the novel was going to be a serialized self-pub thing, and then it was speed written in like 2 months before being put on a crashed publishing schedule. Your plot and characters mustn't fall flat, so if you have to put anything by the wayside, I get why instinct would be to ditch the world, but in SFF especially that's a BAD IDEA. I found the book to be bloated at the length it was, but if there'd been less repetitiveness between Andi and Dex's arguments or Andi moping about the killing she's pretty willingly done, there'd have been room freed up to expand on the world and earn this page count. As it stands, this could've been 200 pages shorter, easy. But it did read fast. The book was not unenjoyable for the flimsiness of the setting; the world not enriching the story didn't make it egregious (harping on moon chew when it's clearly a chewing tobacco corollary is worse reviewing than writing moon chew is writing, actually), and I found the scene-setting to be fairly vivid and colorful overall, if, again, flat in terms of narrative utility and resonance. Pretty set dressing, if you will.
This did unfortunately mean the plot, which centered on the aftermath of an intergalactic conflict, was built on shaky ground. This would normally require higher than average levels of suspension of disbelief (why are each of these planets ruled by One Guy? Why are these rulers so universally Bad At Their Jobs any why are some of them beefing with teenagers? How can space pirates be both "just smugglers looking for the next job to put enough fuel in their ship to get them to their next gig" and also "hardened criminals leaving a galaxy of blood behind them"? And how can just 4 girls man an entire spaceship if they're the latter sort, with only a captain, a pilot, and two gunners as the crew? At least that last fact is why it's so painfully easy to take them over...). However, because the worldbuilding was so flimsy, and thus the contradictions in character and plot specific points were so ubiquitous as to be expected (and thus ignorable), that actually fell by the wayside. Much like Sarah J Maas's Throne of Glass, this was very much book candy: no substance, all aesthetics.
And I say SJM specifically; from the glass spaceship (yes, like the glass castle) to the white blonde sword-wielding (yes, swords in space against guns) trust-me-i'm-baddass space pirate protagonist (yes, like the white blonde sword-wielding trust-me-i'm-baddass king's assassin protagonist), to the paper thin world and plot, to the... well, the frankly unbelievable (given we're in space and there's aliens everywhere) cishet whiteness of it all, Zenith is remarkably like ToG. I think if people weren't ready to scrutinize it so deeply given the YouTube success of one of the authors, the same audience that got their start in reading fantasy with TOG and love it would've liked Zenith, too. A little less, perhaps, because Zenith suffers, like Fourth Wing does, from the authors clearly being aware of SJM's success and perhaps parroting it a little too closely. But the quality is pretty comparable, both in terms of overarching craft structure and in terms of writing skill. As I said, book candy.
Will I be continuing on? ...maybe? Certainly not any time soon. But I am a completionist, and it's only a duology, so I just might. I read all of ToG after all, and this is a much smaller lift. Never say never.
palomal33l1br0s's review
adventurous
funny
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
4.0
laurenkara's review against another edition
3.0
Read this review @ my blog Wonderless Reviews
Zenith is a serialised Space Opera that is co-written by Sasha from abookutopia and Lindsay Cummings. At this moment in time it's only available as an ebook and is being released in four parts.
Given that this is technically a quarter of a book it is hard to do a complete review. Normally I'll summarise the story, but I'd honestly just be repeating everything that's mentioned in the Goodsread summary. I'm a huge fan of Sasha and I really want to read Lindsay's [b:The Murder Complex|13576132|The Murder Complex (The Murder Complex, #1)|Lindsay Cummings|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1385467089s/13576132.jpg|19158475] series so I was excited to read this because AN ALL GIRL SPACE CREW? SIGN ME UP.
I know this is only the first part, but I felt like the characters and world lacked depth. The writing seemed forced at times. We were just thrown into the world so there wasn't much (or any, really) world building. Andi and her crew are all pretty morally ambiguous which is something I love, but they just didn't feel completely real. It was great seeing a bunch of slightly murderous girls who definitely know how to handle themselves, but I have no way of telling whether they're complex or just two dimensional.
I think we were supposed to find Dex, who is the Bounty Hunter, to be the Token Attractive Bad Boy™ but honestly he just annoyed me. I can sense a love triangle brewing too, which I hope I'm wrong about.
We're introduced to a potential antagonist at the end of this first part named Nor who is a Queen on a dying planet and is seeking revenge. She seems like she'll be an interesting character. Revenge definitely seems to be the main theme of this story. Everyone wants it. So I'm curious to see how that plays out.
The first part was mostly just an introduction to the characters. Not much happened beside a few action sequences of Andi trying to stop her ship being taken by Dex. They were definitely some of the strongest parts of the book.
Even though I did have a few issues with this part, Zenith is a fun and quick read. If you're currently in a reading slump then I think this could help bring you out of it. I'll definitely be checking out the next parts!
Zenith is a serialised Space Opera that is co-written by Sasha from abookutopia and Lindsay Cummings. At this moment in time it's only available as an ebook and is being released in four parts.
Given that this is technically a quarter of a book it is hard to do a complete review. Normally I'll summarise the story, but I'd honestly just be repeating everything that's mentioned in the Goodsread summary. I'm a huge fan of Sasha and I really want to read Lindsay's [b:The Murder Complex|13576132|The Murder Complex (The Murder Complex, #1)|Lindsay Cummings|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1385467089s/13576132.jpg|19158475] series so I was excited to read this because AN ALL GIRL SPACE CREW? SIGN ME UP.
I know this is only the first part, but I felt like the characters and world lacked depth. The writing seemed forced at times. We were just thrown into the world so there wasn't much (or any, really) world building. Andi and her crew are all pretty morally ambiguous which is something I love, but they just didn't feel completely real. It was great seeing a bunch of slightly murderous girls who definitely know how to handle themselves, but I have no way of telling whether they're complex or just two dimensional.
I think we were supposed to find Dex, who is the Bounty Hunter
Spoiler
and a past relationship of Andi's who she then tried to killWe're introduced to a potential antagonist at the end of this first part named Nor who is a Queen on a dying planet and is seeking revenge. She seems like she'll be an interesting character. Revenge definitely seems to be the main theme of this story. Everyone wants it. So I'm curious to see how that plays out.
The first part was mostly just an introduction to the characters. Not much happened beside a few action sequences of Andi trying to stop her ship being taken by Dex. They were definitely some of the strongest parts of the book.
Even though I did have a few issues with this part, Zenith is a fun and quick read. If you're currently in a reading slump then I think this could help bring you out of it. I'll definitely be checking out the next parts!
fiona8768's review
4.0
I don’t know what to say about this book, in some parts it felt like it went on too long then other parts of the story went by too quickly. I wish they added more of a backstory or personality to Gilly and Breck, who were main characters just pushed to the side.
corinnab's review against another edition
4.0
This book was gripping and I was intrigued right away. It's very short but I already feel connected to the characters. Knowing that Sasha (a you-tuber) was an author of this book made it even more awesome to read. It is Cinder meets Star Wars? Maybe even Illuminae but I have not yet read that. I loved this and cannot wait for the next installment! Great job ladies!