Reviews

May 2020 edit: Uhhh hello everyone this has gotten way more attention than I ever anticipated (read: any) so… thanks? I guess??
If I wrote this again with other peoples' eyes in mind, I'd change some of the framing and focus, though the overall message would stay the same. The series as a whole is a diamond in the rough—with an emphasis on rough, yes, but also on diamond. There's some good stuff here, it just needs more time and attention.
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Original review posted 11 Jan 2020:

I finished this book on Tuesday, and it’s now Saturday. I’ve had a lot of thoughts about it, and have a complicated relationship with the series as a whole, so the question is, where do I start?

The most obvious place is that this book is, essentially, a published first draft, just like the rest of the series. It was released six days after the last words were written. That’s hardly enough time to do a comprehensive copy edit for something of this length, never mind a line edit. If you go into it with that information in mind, it’s a good start. But if you’re expecting a polished finished product, you will be disappointed. Most of my problems stem from that simple fact. Because a first draft exists to get the story onto the page by whatever means necessary, but a final draft exists to tell that story in an effective and engaging way.

With that preface, let’s start getting into the actual book. I have a lot more to say than this, but the rest of it is less “review” and more “discussion topic.” As a note, I’ll only be hiding spoilers for this book, not the previous three.

My number one complaint is something that isn’t new to Survive (but is a lot more prevalent), and that is everyone’s complete and utter disregard for security clearance levels and operational security in general.

Spoiler

Aeson and Gwen constantly share information that is not for public consumption. Any of Gwen’s family or friends, even the civilians, can apparently come to a top-secret meeting and nobody bats an eye. No one protests. This is even explicitly stated in the text at one point, where George comes along “because no one said he couldn’t.”

Instead of taking advantage of a realistic difficulty for conflict and drama, it’s completely ignored, and I spend the whole book irritated by it.

The biggest thing that frustrated me in terms of the plot itself was how long it took for the pegasei to come back into the story. They were such a big deal at the end of Win—a sentient species enslaved by an unknowing populace—and yet that just… doesn’t come up at all

Spoiler

until what, the last quarter of the book? Which is a number of weeks to months of in-story time

? I know that there’s a lot going on, but there were several points at which Gwen was presented with the topic of the pegasei, and she spared them only the barest thought—when she thought of them at all. She doesn’t do her own research or anything. The problem might as well not exist.

Spoiler

It wasn’t until she was essentially forced to discuss the topic openly with others that this terrible tragedy began to matter again, and then the resolution was—by necessity, due to the delay—rushed. That didn’t have to happen. If you’re going to show the liberation process happening, let it take the time and effort it deserves. We don’t need Gwen magically being able, in just one meeting, to convince everyone to ignore their respective political processes for this emergency.

Another problem I have, this one very broad, is something I’ve been variously thinking of as tone or genre or expectation; there may be another word for it, but I don’t have it yet. There’s a tension that has existed since Win between complicated realism and wish fulfillment. The first two books were pretty solidly on the wish fulfillment side, with a tone is well-established and fairly consistent. Problems are (unrealistically) smoothed over on so many occasions, and overall everything turns out better than could reasonably expected—and that’s fine, because that’s the kind of series it is, so you can set your expectation accordingly. But in Win, that starts to change, starts to edge towards something darker, more complex, more serious. But easy solutions are still more common than not, thanks to repeated deus ex machina. And that’s the tension: the core-realism and the core-idealism “genres” aren’t well integrated, so it doesn’t “just work,” and it becomes both distracting and unsatisfying.

Survive does the same thing. There are some complex and complicated issues and questions raised, including

Spoiler

the whole deal with Romhutat. Poverty is looked in the face… and then mentioned exactly once afterward, in a throwaway interview, before vanishing from the page. An existential threat is confronted head-on, and the cost of that fight is not ignored… but even so, there’s very little meaningful danger. Gwen’s friends and family are never under real threat. Erita and Hasmik die, yes, but are immediately brought back to life. The sun, apparently damaged by the battle, is reset, instantaneously and impossibly, to its previous state. Humanity is spared, because one single person has a useful talent. She doesn’t have to teach others to do it, or even promise she’ll use it. She just has to show she can.

As with the rest of the series, I did like this book. Three stars is a solid rating from me; it was pretty good overall. I just don’t know why I like it. The writing is mediocre at best, there’s a ton of info-dumping and irrelevant information, poor transitions, misuse of italics and capitalization, characters who basically stop existing because they serve no current role in the story, not thinking ideas through, the previously mentioned deus ex machina, missed or wasted opportunities… I could go on. But I guess the ideas are good enough to keep my interest, and the writing isn’t bad enough to push me away entirely.

With further revision, further refinement, I firmly believe this book (this whole series, really) could be something incredible. But right now, it’s only the potential of that, the promise of it—and unfortunately, because I doubt it’s going to get the work it needs, that’s all it will ever be.

RATING: 3.5/5, rounded down

theliterarysewist's review

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adventurous emotional funny hopeful mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

I really loved how this all plays out. Although it's definitely in two parts with the focus on the wedding being so prevalent in the beginning and the war being the focus of the second half. the wedding night was the most awkward intimate scene I have ever read though! Some people just aren't great at writing that stuff, but it can be overlooked because of the awesome storyline. Overall I would really recommend this story to fans of sci-fi and dystopia.

nn3lson's review against another edition

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1.0

I kept trying to finish. I enjoyed the rest of the series but there is just page after page of random info dumping that really seems unnecessary to know. Aeson seems so flat, just there to make Gwen happy. There doesn't seem to be any character development. It felt like work to pick up and read and I was skimming tons since not much happens so finally giving up. So bummed

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