Reviews with content warning for Addiction - Scavenge the Stars

SCAVENGE THE STARS is a Count of Monte Cristo retelling which uses the source material as inspiration and a loose outline, but diverges from the plot and precise premise in way that is delightful to those who are unfamiliar with the inspiration, but delicately balances reference and surprise for those who know it well.

There are two main characters, Amaya (known early on as Silverfish), and Cayo (son of a nobleman who wronged her). Amaya is working with a man named Boon, who helped her find a fortune and offered it for her use as long as she helped him with his aims. Cayo is a recovering gambler who is trying to get back in his father's good graces after losing a large portion of the family fortune to games of chance.

Amaya and Cayo's sections have distinct narrative voices and it was pretty easy to track what was going on. There are some well-laid surprises in the structure of the chapters, especially for someone like myself who has read The Count of Monte Cristo (or someone who has seen one of the movie versions).

The repeated missteps as Cayo and the Countess kept assuming things about each other's actions worked well and made a lot of sense in context. They never built enough to be extremely stressful for me when reading, but they were a completely understandable level of small but well-intentioned miscommunications which would result from these characters getting to know each other when they haven't yet put all their cards on the table.

The worldbuilding is pretty good, it feels like there's a lot of political ground laid that will pay off in the sequel. At times the asides discussing politics with other countries felt a bit distracting because they mostly didn't go anywhere until the very end. None of the characters (so far) were at a level to affect international politics, and while their actions gradually built so it might be possible in RAVAGE THE DARK, it made it harder to know what details mattered to the main plot. I like the handling of the quarantine and plague, there's an excellent payoff for it, as well as ongoing impacts to the main characters.

This was good overall and I'm looking forward to reading RAVAGE THE DARK. I'm happy to read a retelling which had room to surprise me with its plot, using the bones of one of my favorite books in a new way.

Content Warnings

fireside_reads's review against another edition

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adventurous mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

Content Warnings

brookey8888's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

I enjoyed this. I’m not going to lie it was a little slow at times and I didn’t fully connect with the characters and the story. I do love the revenge plot. I also have never seen or read the count of monte cristo so I have no clue if this is a good retelling. I do love all the different representation in this(asexual,bisexual,trans, gay, nonbinary). I also think mostly everyone wasn’t white which is great. I did like silverfish for the most part and Cayo but he was a little boring. I also wish there was more of the water bugs.

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