unsaidwish 's review for:

Cities of Smoke and Starlight by Alli Earnest

2.0

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I don't even remember what I saw that had made me decide to buy this ebook and its sequel, but I am disappointed. The main characters are so unlikeable and never get any better to make the romance aspect at all enticing. Hallie and Kase do nothing but argue like bratty children all the time. Their arguments don't even make sense most of the time. They just argue for the sake of arguing. Kase also just plain has an anger issue, which isn't cute or endearing in any way. If I was around someone who would just fly off the handle at every little thing, I would do everything I could to avoid them. Besides those two, the rest of the characters were so unremarkable and forgettable. I will likely remember nothing about them after I finish writing this review. They really did not do much to drive the story forward, and when two of them die, it is so unemotional, and one of them is supposed to be a brother to our main male character. Probably why the only times characters interact is when yet another catatrosphe occurs (the ship crashed AGAIN, there was a beast attack, some weird magic statues attacked, etc.) However, this way of driving the plot forward was so repetitive and annoying that by the final time the ship crashed I found myself not caring. I was skimming and daydreaming while I was trying to get to the end of this book.. And this is at the point where some answers should be forthcoming. Except.. there aren't any answers. Everything has to remain mysterious and obnoxious and confuse the reader. There were attempts at world-building and history here. Earth died, and humans had to move to another planet. Cool, great. There was some war that supposedly, but not really, erased the native species of the planet. The native species of the planet has some magic, but what is it? Who knows. There's some special metal on the planet that seems to mean a lot, but is it every really explained in a way to make sense for this story? Does it make sense for this story? As many times as it's mentioned, you'd think it's huge. I still have no idea what the point of it is. I will read book 2, since I mentioned I bought the dang thing. I hope some more world-building questions are answered in the second book because all these holes just left me really disappointed.