Take a photo of a barcode or cover
anxiousnachos 's review for:
The Sin Soldiers
by Tracy Auerbach
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an electronic ARC in exhcange for an honest review. This review was originially posted to Anxious Nachos. Actual rating 2.5 stars, rounded up for Goodreads.
Content warnings: implication of sexual assault (though never discussed), violence, addiction.
Sadly The Sin Soldiers is another recent read for me that had a very interesting concept but just didn’t quite work. There were lots of inconsistencies and I was just quite bored throughout, and didn’t care much for any of the characters.
Kai has been kidnapped by the Eastern Forces, and taken to a base where they inject teenagers with different compounds (meant to represent three of the seven sins - wrath, gluttony and sloth) in order to train them into soldiers. These compounds are created from crystals found on the planet. The soldiers are used to guard the mines and mine the crystals, which keep the Eastern Forces in power. Kai is brought to the compound and lives with three other characters, each on a different type of compound.
I was quite disappointed by the book. I thought the premise of a sci-fi novel which examined addiction was really quite interesting, but I really just didn’t get into the book at all. All of the characters were just a bit meh. Their emotions and drive just changed constantly from page to page when they weren’t on the compounds. There was no consistency in their motivations at all. This seemed to be the case for the four MCs we’re supposed to root for, as well as the villains of the piece, the Eastern Forces. They’re supposed to be this really evil organisation, forcing drugs into young kids to make them zombie like creatures who’ll fight for them….and yet they let them have loving relationships? It just doesn’t make sense to me. I didn’t really find any of the villains particularly villainous. Kai, the POV we see from for most of the book wasn’t well developed. Her thoughts and feelings made no sense to me (for example, her level of hurt over the ‘betrayal’....by someone she met a day ago.) A lot of the motivations just didn’t really gel.
The characters who came into play closer to the end, Aric and Dex, were equally confusing. Of all, I think Aric has the most potential. He’s characterised as more evil than the Eastern Forces, and this is successful - he comes across as quite creepy (and not inconsistently so!) so he’s definitely one of the better reads. Dex is just a mess who seems to not care at all for the sister he apparently spent a week worrying over and trying to rescue. I literally scoffed out loud when it got to his protective brother ‘stay away from my sister, champ’ speech.
I don’t really have much to say about the plot. The book only lasts a week of time, and that’s just far too rushed for the amount of changes in character motivations. Perhaps the constant changing in motivation would’ve made more sense if it had actually happened over a longer period of time, instead of a day.
I did think the concept and discussions around addiction were interesting, and I enjoyed the idea behind using these different compounds to evoke different responses in the soldiers. One of my favourite scenes was the glass in the tunnel scene, as I felt that really portrayed the evilness of the Eastern Forces as well as the trauma and feelings of addiction. I also thought the concept of the planet itself was great - I really like books based on the human race destroying Earth and embarking on a voyage to a new planet. Unfortunately, that was a very small part of the story and wasn’t mentioned much. I’d hoped we’d find out more about how the society began after escaping the dying Earth, but we didn’t.
I really wanted to like this book. The concept was fantastic, the cover is AMAZING. I really enjoy reading books which have a good portrayal of mental illness. Unfortunately, this wasn’t it. I just didn’t get into this one - the characters really let it down for me.
Content warnings: implication of sexual assault (though never discussed), violence, addiction.
Sadly The Sin Soldiers is another recent read for me that had a very interesting concept but just didn’t quite work. There were lots of inconsistencies and I was just quite bored throughout, and didn’t care much for any of the characters.
Kai has been kidnapped by the Eastern Forces, and taken to a base where they inject teenagers with different compounds (meant to represent three of the seven sins - wrath, gluttony and sloth) in order to train them into soldiers. These compounds are created from crystals found on the planet. The soldiers are used to guard the mines and mine the crystals, which keep the Eastern Forces in power. Kai is brought to the compound and lives with three other characters, each on a different type of compound.
I was quite disappointed by the book. I thought the premise of a sci-fi novel which examined addiction was really quite interesting, but I really just didn’t get into the book at all. All of the characters were just a bit meh. Their emotions and drive just changed constantly from page to page when they weren’t on the compounds. There was no consistency in their motivations at all. This seemed to be the case for the four MCs we’re supposed to root for, as well as the villains of the piece, the Eastern Forces. They’re supposed to be this really evil organisation, forcing drugs into young kids to make them zombie like creatures who’ll fight for them….and yet they let them have loving relationships? It just doesn’t make sense to me. I didn’t really find any of the villains particularly villainous. Kai, the POV we see from for most of the book wasn’t well developed. Her thoughts and feelings made no sense to me (for example, her level of hurt over the ‘betrayal’....by someone she met a day ago.) A lot of the motivations just didn’t really gel.
The characters who came into play closer to the end, Aric and Dex, were equally confusing. Of all, I think Aric has the most potential. He’s characterised as more evil than the Eastern Forces, and this is successful - he comes across as quite creepy (and not inconsistently so!) so he’s definitely one of the better reads. Dex is just a mess who seems to not care at all for the sister he apparently spent a week worrying over and trying to rescue. I literally scoffed out loud when it got to his protective brother ‘stay away from my sister, champ’ speech.
I don’t really have much to say about the plot. The book only lasts a week of time, and that’s just far too rushed for the amount of changes in character motivations. Perhaps the constant changing in motivation would’ve made more sense if it had actually happened over a longer period of time, instead of a day.
I did think the concept and discussions around addiction were interesting, and I enjoyed the idea behind using these different compounds to evoke different responses in the soldiers. One of my favourite scenes was the glass in the tunnel scene, as I felt that really portrayed the evilness of the Eastern Forces as well as the trauma and feelings of addiction. I also thought the concept of the planet itself was great - I really like books based on the human race destroying Earth and embarking on a voyage to a new planet. Unfortunately, that was a very small part of the story and wasn’t mentioned much. I’d hoped we’d find out more about how the society began after escaping the dying Earth, but we didn’t.
I really wanted to like this book. The concept was fantastic, the cover is AMAZING. I really enjoy reading books which have a good portrayal of mental illness. Unfortunately, this wasn’t it. I just didn’t get into this one - the characters really let it down for me.