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1.5 stars! This review will be (mostly) spoiler free! Depends on what you constitute as spoiler.
Synopsis:
A band of space girl-pirates who perform less-than-legal acts throughout the Mirabel galaxy are captured. Their leader, Andi aka the Bloody Baroness, is forced not only into a rescue mission to save the son of one the Mirabel galaxy leaders, but also into working alongside a boy from her past who broke her heart. Meanwhile, the Queen of Xen Ptera is quietly biding her time, planning to exact her revenge on the Mirabel galaxy who turned their backs on her and destroyed her planet.
Initial thoughts:
So it’s obvious by now that many of the popular reviews of this book are on the negative side. Because of that, I pushed off reading this book for many months and now that I’ve sufficiently lowered my expectations, I felt ready to read it. I think because I went into this book expecting a 1 star read (and the fact that I was listening on Audible) that I may have enjoyed it more than others, but not by much. I was unimpressed and would not recommend this book to anyone who is already deeply into the sci-fi/fantasy genre because you will likely also be unimpressed. Androma is a distasteful rip-off of Celaena Sardothien (Throne of Glass), the other characters are boring and have horrendous or no development/back story, and the plot is incredibly boring and predictable. The villain in this story is likely the only person of interest I had.
Plot:
I’ll talk about what I do like first because it won’t take as much time:
The space travel was rather fun. I think these authors did a wonderful job of depicting travel through the galaxy in a glass spaceship and created pretty cool imagery for the different planets that we get to visit.
The multiple POVs, though not liked by the majority, I think helped the story feel more well-rounded.
The Audible kind of makes this story easier to finish because when you have absolutely nothing else to listen to in traffic, you have this book.
Onto what I didn’t like:
First of all, this book isn’t what it’s sold to be. This band of supposedly fearsome female pirates is actually a group of soft, whiny girls from random parts of the galaxy who just happened into Andi’s life. I can’t even recall how or why any of the girls began to be a part of Andi’s crew. And the synops says they were captured on “a mission that went awry,” but they were captured while traveling through space on a rather normal day. What fearsome pirate crew just gets captured on a normal day?
Second of all, this book just makes so fxcking sense. Time and time again I found myself thinking “What you just said/did contradicts what just happened 2 seconds ago, WTF…” For example:
Wasn't it right in the beginning when Dex described himself as "a man without honor, someone who's heart could always be bought with the right amount of money" BUT THEN… every other chapter from there on he’s trying to come off as this caring, sweet, oh-I-betrayed-you-for-a-noble-reason kind of guy. Why even have Dex talk about himself like he knows he's a dirtbag to begin with if you're just gonna go back and try to change it?
They describe Lyra as having “this darkness.” What darkness?? Are they referring to her "want to fly" rather than rule a kingdom? Because I'd call that more wanderlust, not darkness… NO, dark is not a word I would use to describe Lyra who doesn't even kill people in this supposedly “murderous criminal pirate" crew she's a part of.
Later on we get to meet Andy’s father. He goes and tells Andi to her face that she was no longer his daughter after "that incident" and yet it was right after that incident that he felt the need to save her? That's a complete contradiction right there. Why even save her if he truly felt that way?
And those are only some examples…
The romance was C R I N G E Y ! ! The dialogue between Dex and Andi was not swooney nor sweet. Not to mention, Dex was the perfect example of the kind of guy who’s asshole tendencies are NOT forgiven simply because he does a few things in Andi’s favor. Poor attempt and execution at redeeming the male love interest.
The mission they go on is utterly boring. They say “Andi and her crew embark on a dangerous, soul-testing journey that could restore order to their ship or just as easily start a war that will devour worlds.” The mission to save Valen didn’t seem that dangerous, everything happened rather easily and smoothly to be blunt. I kept waiting and waiting for some plot twist to happen, but nothing did. This made the whole rescue mission flat and without climax.
The last few chapters were somewhat appealing. Though I predicted literally everything (EVERYTHING! how annoying), it was still fun to watch it all go down. Mostly because I wanted to see who would die. Now, with the ending supposedly “starting a war to devour worlds”? Please… It did not seem to be that grand of a scale when reading. Or maybe I just didn’t care enough.
Characters: They are so inconsistent!
ANDI - is likely the only person who stays somewhat true to her persona, but even that is contradicting. She’s supposed to be merciless and driven, but a majority of the story we only get 5-sec snippets of her being a badass swordsman and the rest is just her pouting and sitting in misery over her kills. Another seriously seriously terrible parody of Celaena. Another extremely annoying part of her is that she has so many things on her plate and she cannot stop thinking about Dex and his eyes and his lips and PUKE.
DEX - “at the mercy of a sadistic bounty hunter from Andi’s past,” uhh who? Dex may be a bounty hunter, and his character may be terribly explained, but he is not sadistic. Also Andi is never at his mercy, he’s basically at her mercy the entire time, butt-kissing her to get her forgiveness.
LIRA - is a spoiled brat that doesn't want to assume any responsibilities and just wants to play in space all day. She didn't even leave home for any bad reason or particularly difficult past.
I literally know next to nothing about the other characters other than the fact that they’re flat, have poorly explained back stories, and could die and I wouldn’t care.
NOR - is the villain and kind of the only person who is interesting. She’s had everything taken from her (for no reason that I can pick up, which is absurd), but she’s coming back with a vengeance.
Overall:
This read just pissed me off. I expected so much from one of my favorite booktubers and was supremely let down. It was like the publishing company didn’t even going through an editing phase with this book. They just rushed to put it together and sold it. Not a fan. Not buying the sequel.
PS: This doesn’t mean I wouldn’t buy future books from these authors. Nor does it mean I wouldn’t buy future books from other book tubers. This one was just a failure. I won’t judge other books for it.