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A review by banrions
Transistor by Molly J. Bragg
3.0
Unfortunately, I wanted to like this one a little bit more than I did. I don’t think it’s bad by any means, but it didn’t feel totally up to par with the first one. If we’re going on actual enjoyment level, this is probably a 2.5, for me.
I liked Naomi as a character, but I felt like we didn’t really know Anika all that well. We open with Naomi having been pining for her for three years, and see their first date, and then they go on a road trip adventure and fall in love over the course of a week. I think, “adventure” romances where it’s travel and a shorter span of time are really hard to pull off, and this one didn’t quite do it for me personally. It was a lot of action, which is fine, but it felt like (despite having a decent amount of dynamics and characters talking) it didn’t feel fleshed out enough for me. But that could absolutely be a personal preference thing, I’m more of a slow burner girl and less of an action one unless I’m really in the mood for it. I was also sort of confused as to why Naomi was becoming Anika’s protector in the first place? Like, Anika is a former army person, had powers of her own, why isn’t she fighting her own battles? Idk. It didn’t totally make sense to me, but I just rolled with it.
Some of it felt a bit repetitive—every new person we met had to have Anika’s “story” rehashed in ways that the reader already knows, which led to me skipping whole paragraphs more than once. A few of the interactions felt a little cringy for me, but I can’t totally put my finger on WHY. I think I also had to slightly readjust what I thought this world and series was going to be—I realized that part way through the first book too. I came in expecting superheroes and sci-fi, and there is a lot of other magic and fantasy stuff (the dragons, actual magic, and now literal angels and demons) and it took me a bit to switch my brain there.
I DID enjoy elements of this, Naomi is a great character and I like the world building that’s being drawn out and many of the side characters. I’m eager to read the next one in the series, but I’m bummed that I didn’t connect with this one as much as I was excited to, because it felt like it had a lot of potential going into it.
(I hope we get Eurion’s love story at some point!)
I liked Naomi as a character, but I felt like we didn’t really know Anika all that well. We open with Naomi having been pining for her for three years, and see their first date, and then they go on a road trip adventure and fall in love over the course of a week. I think, “adventure” romances where it’s travel and a shorter span of time are really hard to pull off, and this one didn’t quite do it for me personally. It was a lot of action, which is fine, but it felt like (despite having a decent amount of dynamics and characters talking) it didn’t feel fleshed out enough for me. But that could absolutely be a personal preference thing, I’m more of a slow burner girl and less of an action one unless I’m really in the mood for it. I was also sort of confused as to why Naomi was becoming Anika’s protector in the first place? Like, Anika is a former army person, had powers of her own, why isn’t she fighting her own battles? Idk. It didn’t totally make sense to me, but I just rolled with it.
Some of it felt a bit repetitive—every new person we met had to have Anika’s “story” rehashed in ways that the reader already knows, which led to me skipping whole paragraphs more than once. A few of the interactions felt a little cringy for me, but I can’t totally put my finger on WHY. I think I also had to slightly readjust what I thought this world and series was going to be—I realized that part way through the first book too. I came in expecting superheroes and sci-fi, and there is a lot of other magic and fantasy stuff (the dragons, actual magic, and now literal angels and demons) and it took me a bit to switch my brain there.
I DID enjoy elements of this, Naomi is a great character and I like the world building that’s being drawn out and many of the side characters. I’m eager to read the next one in the series, but I’m bummed that I didn’t connect with this one as much as I was excited to, because it felt like it had a lot of potential going into it.
(I hope we get Eurion’s love story at some point!)