Personal Rating: 4 Stars Goodreads Rating: 3.91 Stars Life in the outer realm is a lawless, dirty, hard existence, and Solara Brooks is hungry for it. Just out of the orphanage, she needs a fresh start in a place where nobody cares about the engine grease beneath her fingernails or the felony tattoos across her knuckles. She's so desperate to reach the realm that she's willing to indenture herself to Doran Spaulding, the rich and popular quarterback who made her life miserable all through high school, in exchange for passage aboard the spaceliner Zenith. When a twist of fate lands them instead on the Banshee, a vessel of dubious repute, Doran learns he's been framed on Earth for conspiracy. As he pursues a set of mysterious coordinates rumored to hold the key to clearing his name, he and Solara must get past their enmity to work together and evade those out for their arrest. Life on the Banshee may be tumultuous, but as Solara and Doran are forced to question everything they once believed about their world—and each other—the ship becomes home, and the eccentric crew family. But what Solara and Doran discover on the mysterious Planet X has the power to not only alter their lives, but the existence of everyone in the universe... (goodreads.com) Dang, whoever does Melissa Lander’s covers is amazing! I thought the cover for Alienated was cool and then I saw this one and I just about swooned. It’s even prettier in person because the golden trail has little gold flecks throughout it that shimmer and sparkle. IT’S JUST SO PRETTY, MAN! Pardon my outburst, but I really like shiny covers. Oh, and the content was pretty good too. Okay, so this book was really fun to read. Some parts of it felt a little bit like they were borrowed from The Lunar Chronicles, but on the whole it was a fun, fresh space adventure. In some ways it reminded me of Guardians of the Galaxy, which is certainly not a bad thing. (I’m also kind of in a Guardians mood because I just watched the second one and I’m still fangirling over it like crazy. It was hilarious and wonderful.) To be sure, there were parts that had me cringing and at times I kinda just wanted to put the book down, but for the most part I enjoyed the antics of the crew and the main characters. Plotwise, the story was great. For some reason it made me think of a space Moana. I enjoyed the pirates, planets, and scientific shenanigans. I feel like it would have made a good musical. It was lighthearted, but had enough serious tones that it didn’t feel cheesy. Solara was fun, I guess, she seemed a bit to close to Cinder for comfort, but she did have her own personality. Her past was given to us neatly and without over explanation. Sometimes she made dumb mistakes, but they seemed like mistakes that any teenager could make. In that way her flaws were relatable. Doran was not my favorite guy at the beginning. In fact, you could even say that I didn’t like him. Perhaps I even loathed his posh boy attitude and demeaning nature. But good characters have a way of changing. By the end I almost liked him more than I liked Solara. Of course there were some parts of him that still had me rolling my eyes, but it was nice to see him grow as a character. Cleanliness for this book was about what I expected from a Melissa Landers book. Pushing the limits of PG-13 is the best way to describe her writing, but still a PG-13. Language was not fantastic, and innuendos and romantic smoochy smooch were noticeable. It wasn’t intolerable, but it does kind of put a damper on my enjoyment of the story. There was one line in the story that I actually blacked out with marker (don’t worry, it was my copy, not the library’s) because, though it was meant in fun, it was not a line I thought necessary to the book or even like something that the characters would have said. It kind of felt like Melissa Landers threw it in there to make fun of Christianity. So, yeah, I blacked it out because I figured it’s my personal copy and I can censor things for myself if I want. It’s not like I’m forcing everyone to black out that line. I just didn’t approve of it for myself so I covered it up. And, yes, I did feel kind of bad about marking a book. To summarize: I really liked this book, I thought it was a good read, and I recommend it to people who like sci-fi space stories. Or friendship stories. Or piratey stories. Or just because the cover is gorgeous. Thanks for reading my second post in one week (you might be wondering at this point if I’ve been replaced by some sort of writing machine, but fear not it’s still me… though I could be programmed to tell you that). I hope you enjoyed it and that I won’t be too long in posting another one! Until next time mis amigos. VWOOSH! (That was me flying by in my spaceship.) Image: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/21793182-starflight
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