A review by miyaosamu
Victories Greater Than Death by Charlie Jane Anders

adventurous funny hopeful lighthearted reflective tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

 Thank you to Tor Teen for sending me a physical arc along with an e-arc via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

I really wish I ended up liking this a lot more, take my opinion with a grain of salt because personally this book wasn't for me. Space opera adventures along with the found family trope has been repetitive and this book didn't particularly bring anything new to the table. I found the writing very mediocre with its cheesiness and info dumpy, though I was grateful for the short chapters, it just felt very early 2000s bad fanfic-esque. If it wasn't for all the cursing, I think this book overall felt like it could've been catered more towards middle grade level. I was just bored throughout a majority of the story, things sped up in the last 100 pages and got more exciting I'll give it that. Other things I did appreciate though was the representation and incorporation of inclusivity of gender expression and language with how everyone was able to understand each other. Also extra star because my heart swooned with the f/f romance, it felt like insta-romance at first and with unnecessary conflicts happening between them but as the story progressed their development got a lot better and they were so cute. The friendships, romance, and realizing one's self worth was definitely what got me through this book, but overall most of the concepts were intriguing but the execution was a let down.