A review by bldownunder
Firstlife by Gena Showalter

2.0

I had high hopes for this book, given the plot. Instead I was quite disappointed - the pace of the book was frenetic, which suited the plot, but instead of instilling urgency in me as propelled by the main character, it instead felt horribly rushed to the point of sacrificing good writing. The character development was limited, which seems strange given the breadth of time spent on establishing Ten's background, and the worldbuilding was fantastic. I'm not sure whether the sequels continue in this vein, but if I had been the editor, I would have insisted the writer slowed things down and gave the reader time to really absorb what's going on. Teenage protagonist racing against the time or not, the actual grammatical English behind this story was lacking. The sentence structure was so choppy and instead of being dynamic, it just felt like badfic.