Reviews

character study number 2 of the warchild series brings us to ryan azarcon, rich kid son of the famous captain azarcon and pr specialist songlian lau. he makes for an interestingly different experience to jos because ryan is, in a word, obnoxious

i mean don't get me wrong, it's an entertaining kind of obnoxious! he's spoiled but he's also funny and ridiculously emotionally open, you go through a entire book of repression station in warchild and it's a whole new world switching to ryan who's never met a feeling he didn't want to express

also jos comes back as i'd hoped and let me tell you right now, their interactions are AMAZING, i was just about dying inside imagining the internal '????? ! ???' he was probably experiencing every time they encountered each other

in all, a pretty great experience except for one thing

Spoiler

what WAS that with ryan's mom? seriously, WHAT WAS THAT???? he was such a little shit to her and i thought the novel was going somewhere with it, like part of his coming of age was gonna be him realizing their similarities and maybe picking up some wisdom from veronica mars that the hero is the one who stays? and then she DIES? and the book is all ~oooh captain azarcon, manly captain who plays by his own rules and apparently knows better about what's good for his kid who he's spent like maybe two months with cumulatively as opposed to his mother who actually raised him?

SERIOUSLY, WHAT WAS THAT?????

so yeah. i didn't love it like i loved warchild but a pretty good time regardless. 3 stars

thistlechaser's review against another edition

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3.0

Not this book's fault, but I went into this series thinking it was going to be about the two main characters from the first book. It's not. Every book in this series is about different characters and what they see/do/think/feel during the war. This book was about the son of the captain of one of the humans' deepspace battleships.

Because I loved the first book so deeply, and I thought this book was continuing it, I was so disappointed to find out it was about different characters. Also, I strongly disliked (to the point of hating) the main character of this one, so I had a harder time enjoying it.

Ryan Azarcon is a spoiled rich kid. A celebrity. His father is a famous captain, his mother is some powerful government person. He's rich. He's drop-dead beautiful. He's bored. He acts out a lot. He does drugs.

Some bad things happen to him (a terrorist bombing kills one of his family members) and he nearly has a breakdown. After what happened to Jos in the first book, I had to work hard to not roll my eyes that Ryan was reacting so poorly to something much more minor. Something bad? Yeah, sure. But Jos spent many years with no one to trust, kept as a slave, questionably used by the only person he could trust, lost his whole family, and was abandoned multiple times. And Jos handled it much much better. Is it fair to compare the two? Probably not, but I couldn't help doing it anyway.

Ryan ends up on his father's ship, where luckily we get glimpses of some of the characters from the first book. Even Jos and Niko made a (WAY TOO BRIEF) appearance.

I did read it all, and I did enjoy parts of it (everything after Ryan getting on the ship, since then we got to see characters we knew), I just wanted something different.

serru's review against another edition

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5.0

I loved [b:Warchild|184786|Warchild (Warchild, #1)|Karin Lowachee|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1344270885s/184786.jpg|178604], the previous book in this series, and I'd heard that Burndive focuses on a different, less likeable character. But Karin Lowachee does not disappoint! Burndive is an outstanding follow-up, focusing on Ryan, the son of Captain Cairo Azarcon whom we met in the previous book. Ryan is a difficult character to like but Lowachee writes him with a lot of sympathy and he grew on me as the story progressed. It was also interesting to see old characters from Warchild, particularly Jos, through Ryan's eyes, particularly Jos, who was the main character of that book. There's some hilarious banter between the characters as well.

While Burndive lacks a lot of the action of Warchild, it was still an engrossing read. I was drawn in by the emotional journey that Ryan takes in navigating and ultimately mending his relationship with his father. The author is extremely skilled at writing emotionally true stories, and her careful, controlled prose is dripping with raw emotions. The characters face many difficult situations, and Lowachee never makes it easy for them, but it's through this that her characters truly shine.

An outstanding book overall, and highly recommended!

heyt's review against another edition

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4.0

I was a little worried I wouldn't like this as much as the first one because of the narrator change but after getting used to the different perspective about events in this world I was hooked. I liked being able to see the characters from the first book through a different lens. There's a lot more backstory to certain charcters that were only hinted at in the first. At first I found Ryan to be a bit annoying and entitled but the writing was good enough to make you see inside him and watch for his growth throughout.

storiwa's review

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3.0

not as good as warchild but still entertaining.

readingrachael7's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional medium-paced

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

4.0

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