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A review by emeraldletter
The Disasters by M.K. England
4.0
Two words.
Space. Pirates.
Sort of. They’re kind of innocent… But they’re good enough for me!
Mostly because I had no expectations or hype for this book, I just looked at the description a couple of times on BorrowBox and eventually agreed to try it. I liked the interesting characters, brilliant setting and engaging story that kept me reading the whole way through.
Nax Hall, a flunked out pilot, is the main character and POV (point of view) for the whole book. He’s a bit unstable and quick to judge, but that just makes him realistically flawed. The books starts with the poetic justice; with the fact that the only people who escaped when the space academy got taken over was the people the academy had flunked out for reasons of discrimination (mostly). Hehe!
The hijinks and heists only became funner from there with seat-of-your-pants piloting, and last minute escape plans. The world..heh-hem…GALAXY building only got better from there by displaying different planet colonies with ‘this could actually be true’ histories. And not many info dumps either. At its’ best, The Disasters was a fun space opera filled with rich world building, great action scenes and interesting character dynamics. The crew's banter was pretty funny and I particularly loved Nax’s relationship with his brother. It was realistic and I love the was it was developed and excellently foreshadowed. All this was especially brilliant coupled with the fact this was a debut novel.
At its' worst The Disasters was another YA ‘fit-as-many-under-represented-groups-as-possible’ book with too much swearing (f-bomb, b*tch, ass***, da*n etc). In the romance department as well there were too many loose threads and by the end and it ended up being a little confusing.
To give an example of the over-representation, the main character was bi, another dude was gay, one girl had anxiety, the other girl was trans, and another was islamic. I don’t really have anything against these identities but it’s kind of annoying when it feels like these labels have been put on them, not as apart of their character’s personality, but just as representation for the labels.
Anyway. Sorry ‘bout the rant.
There were a few innuendos (kind of impossible to have a YA book with any romance without them!-*sigh/eyeroll*), but nothing more explicit than kissing in actuality. All in all, I think it was a fun space opera with some fairly minor deficiencies. So, three and a half stars! I'd also probably recommend to a 16+ audience.
Thank you for reading, this is Commander Story Girl,
Signing Out.
Space. Pirates.
Sort of. They’re kind of innocent… But they’re good enough for me!
Mostly because I had no expectations or hype for this book, I just looked at the description a couple of times on BorrowBox and eventually agreed to try it. I liked the interesting characters, brilliant setting and engaging story that kept me reading the whole way through.
Nax Hall, a flunked out pilot, is the main character and POV (point of view) for the whole book. He’s a bit unstable and quick to judge, but that just makes him realistically flawed. The books starts with the poetic justice; with the fact that the only people who escaped when the space academy got taken over was the people the academy had flunked out for reasons of discrimination (mostly). Hehe!
The hijinks and heists only became funner from there with seat-of-your-pants piloting, and last minute escape plans. The world..heh-hem…GALAXY building only got better from there by displaying different planet colonies with ‘this could actually be true’ histories. And not many info dumps either. At its’ best, The Disasters was a fun space opera filled with rich world building, great action scenes and interesting character dynamics. The crew's banter was pretty funny and I particularly loved Nax’s relationship with his brother. It was realistic and I love the was it was developed and excellently foreshadowed. All this was especially brilliant coupled with the fact this was a debut novel.
At its' worst The Disasters was another YA ‘fit-as-many-under-represented-groups-as-possible’ book with too much swearing (f-bomb, b*tch, ass***, da*n etc). In the romance department as well there were too many loose threads and by the end and it ended up being a little confusing.
To give an example of the over-representation, the main character was bi, another dude was gay, one girl had anxiety, the other girl was trans, and another was islamic. I don’t really have anything against these identities but it’s kind of annoying when it feels like these labels have been put on them, not as apart of their character’s personality, but just as representation for the labels.
Anyway. Sorry ‘bout the rant.
There were a few innuendos (kind of impossible to have a YA book with any romance without them!-*sigh/eyeroll*), but nothing more explicit than kissing in actuality. All in all, I think it was a fun space opera with some fairly minor deficiencies. So, three and a half stars! I'd also probably recommend to a 16+ audience.
Thank you for reading, this is Commander Story Girl,
Signing Out.