Scan barcode
A review by gmv
Zar by Alana Khan
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
0.75
I want to start off by saying that this was a buddy read with my book club, and I did not choose this book for our monthly read. Keep this in mind before reading my review because we are already setting the tone for an uphill battle. There are audiences for these types of novellas, and I am not that target audience.
My review isn’t a review. It’s more of a rant. But if you like surface-level, first-person point of view and an easy read with a sprinkle of smut here and there, go for it. You do you. Eat it up.
The rest will be written in spoiler blocks.
What went wrong, even before I started this book, was that I was already reading another novella with a very similar premise. I do this to balance out what I would like to read just so it can get me motivated to read a book I wouldn’t even dare touch with a 10-foot pole. Speaking of poles, I will get to Zar’s pole later.
When it comes to novellas, I expect a bit more fine-tuning and tightening of plots. There shouldn’t be a dilution of multiple characters or a lack of world-building. There isn’t enough breathing room for unnecessary repetition of inner monologuing. There is a limited amount of words, and those words should be dedicated to giving us substance, a reason to care, and a reason to jump back into this world.
Which leads me to ranting about the main character of this story, Anya. She has to be one of my top unreliable narrators when it comes to lore-building and caring for a character. She isn’t giving anything. Even her fertility is lacking. She is a self-absorbed, uneducated, lean cuisine preservative-filled female human, and I am having a hard time believing that these alien cartels picked her, even at random. After all these check-ups by the doctor, they should’ve dumped her out in the airlock or back to earth cause they were feeding an extra mouth that wasn’t providing what they wanted. Everything that comes out of her mouth makes me question why Zar would even want to have children with her. When it comes to decently thought-out written books, I expect the acronym to follow up with their meaning. That is the standard that has already been set up in all of the sci-fi books I have read, even the really shitty short stories. And for her to toss acronyms left and right, I had to go out of my way to understand her. I understand this is what the author intended for her mind to be like; however, this is a book, not a comment section or text messaging app.
I am a fellow enjoyer of sci-fi, and the first words I saw were “Present Day. Somewhere in Space.” We’re off to a great start. I am not even getting crumbs. This is the dust of dead skin cells getting vacuumed up and solidified in the cosmos while I am on earth waiting for anything remotely clever. I went from reading the Three Body Problem by Liu Cixin to…this. My brain was trying to downgrade the quality I fed it, and it was unhappy with me.
But I digress. I shouldn’t get into a tangent and rant. (It’s not like Anya didn’t pull this move multiple times on various occasions, which made me roll my eyes so hard that I developed a headache.)
She doesn’t care about what comes out of Zar’s mouth. She doesn’t want to hear about his trauma, and yet she boasts about how empathetic she is. She also considered herself so clever in figuring out who was on the ship and what was going to happen to them within a week, but Tyree provided all of this vital information to drive the plot forward. What also made Anya a not-so-humble human was her labeling Zar as gay. She didn’t take into account that he was stuck on this ship against his will to rape his cellmate, and here is Anya going, “Why doesn’t he think I’m hot? Why isn’t his dick hard? Why isn’t he raping me longer? It must be because he’s gay.”
I also didn’t like how she kept calling him minute-man cause he ejaculated in her very quickly, so she didn’t have to suffer. After explaining this to Anya, she still calls him minute-man in her head. What the actual audacity of this woman. She has the mental capacity of an underdeveloped teenage brain. The author keeps telling readers that she is an adult and can make her own choices. I have to wholeheartedly disagree with that.
The novella got even worse when Tyree’s point of view came in. What was the point of having her point of view if all she had to provide about her species was that they are a primitive life-form and no one knows why they are like that and to just accept that they can develop genders? When she asked her parents, they also said, “I dunno.” A missed opportunity to provide a grain of lore instead of another dust. What little show/interaction we get, the readers just have all telling---not the best if the author’s goal was to have Anya and Zar fall in love organically.
There wasn’t enough substance for angst, lore, action scenes, thought-provoking debates, or dialogues that gave meaning to their little “romance.” Hell, even the sex scenes were severely underwhelming. Whenever they interact, Anya says something that any sane mind would walk the other way. But since this is a romance sci-fi, they are forced to fall in love by the will of the author within the week of raping each other.
Shadow is another matter. He is already irredeemable in my eyes, and I will not be giving the next segment of their little world another go. I do not care enough for him and Tyree.
The worst offense in this entire book was not getting the actual measurement of Zar’s penis. You can’t just say it’s huge, and then it goes right into her vagina. The other novella book provided dick size measurements, and this one couldn’t? The barest of all, minimum. Could’ve been clever with how to measure if they couldn’t pull out a tape. She could’ve measured it against her arm and then memorized it when she was getting her checkups at the doctor’s office. There has to be some sort of measurement tools in there.
First impressions are everything—and I mean everything. I read terrible horror stories, so this is saying something. My standards are very low.
Despite all of that, I gave it a .75 stars. I’d read worse.
My review isn’t a review. It’s more of a rant. But if you like surface-level, first-person point of view and an easy read with a sprinkle of smut here and there, go for it. You do you. Eat it up.
The rest will be written in spoiler blocks.
When it comes to novellas, I expect a bit more fine-tuning and tightening of plots. There shouldn’t be a dilution of multiple characters or a lack of world-building. There isn’t enough breathing room for unnecessary repetition of inner monologuing. There is a limited amount of words, and those words should be dedicated to giving us substance, a reason to care, and a reason to jump back into this world.
Which leads me to ranting about the main character of this story, Anya. She has to be one of my top unreliable narrators when it comes to lore-building and caring for a character. She isn’t giving anything. Even her fertility is lacking. She is a self-absorbed, uneducated, lean cuisine preservative-filled female human, and I am having a hard time believing that these alien cartels picked her, even at random. After all these check-ups by the doctor, they should’ve dumped her out in the airlock or back to earth cause they were feeding an extra mouth that wasn’t providing what they wanted. Everything that comes out of her mouth makes me question why Zar would even want to have children with her. When it comes to decently thought-out written books, I expect the acronym to follow up with their meaning. That is the standard that has already been set up in all of the sci-fi books I have read, even the really shitty short stories. And for her to toss acronyms left and right, I had to go out of my way to understand her. I understand this is what the author intended for her mind to be like; however, this is a book, not a comment section or text messaging app.
I am a fellow enjoyer of sci-fi, and the first words I saw were “Present Day. Somewhere in Space.” We’re off to a great start. I am not even getting crumbs. This is the dust of dead skin cells getting vacuumed up and solidified in the cosmos while I am on earth waiting for anything remotely clever. I went from reading the Three Body Problem by Liu Cixin to…this. My brain was trying to downgrade the quality I fed it, and it was unhappy with me.
But I digress. I shouldn’t get into a tangent and rant. (It’s not like Anya didn’t pull this move multiple times on various occasions, which made me roll my eyes so hard that I developed a headache.)
She doesn’t care about what comes out of Zar’s mouth. She doesn’t want to hear about his trauma, and yet she boasts about how empathetic she is. She also considered herself so clever in figuring out who was on the ship and what was going to happen to them within a week, but Tyree provided all of this vital information to drive the plot forward. What also made Anya a not-so-humble human was her labeling Zar as gay. She didn’t take into account that he was stuck on this ship against his will to rape his cellmate, and here is Anya going, “Why doesn’t he think I’m hot? Why isn’t his dick hard? Why isn’t he raping me longer? It must be because he’s gay.”
I also didn’t like how she kept calling him minute-man cause he ejaculated in her very quickly, so she didn’t have to suffer. After explaining this to Anya, she still calls him minute-man in her head. What the actual audacity of this woman. She has the mental capacity of an underdeveloped teenage brain. The author keeps telling readers that she is an adult and can make her own choices. I have to wholeheartedly disagree with that.
The novella got even worse when Tyree’s point of view came in. What was the point of having her point of view if all she had to provide about her species was that they are a primitive life-form and no one knows why they are like that and to just accept that they can develop genders? When she asked her parents, they also said, “I dunno.” A missed opportunity to provide a grain of lore instead of another dust. What little show/interaction we get, the readers just have all telling---not the best if the author’s goal was to have Anya and Zar fall in love organically.
There wasn’t enough substance for angst, lore, action scenes, thought-provoking debates, or dialogues that gave meaning to their little “romance.” Hell, even the sex scenes were severely underwhelming. Whenever they interact, Anya says something that any sane mind would walk the other way. But since this is a romance sci-fi, they are forced to fall in love by the will of the author within the week of raping each other.
Shadow is another matter. He is already irredeemable in my eyes, and I will not be giving the next segment of their little world another go. I do not care enough for him and Tyree.
The worst offense in this entire book was not getting the actual measurement of Zar’s penis. You can’t just say it’s huge, and then it goes right into her vagina. The other novella book provided dick size measurements, and this one couldn’t? The barest of all, minimum. Could’ve been clever with how to measure if they couldn’t pull out a tape. She could’ve measured it against her arm and then memorized it when she was getting her checkups at the doctor’s office. There has to be some sort of measurement tools in there.
First impressions are everything—and I mean everything. I read terrible horror stories, so this is saying something. My standards are very low.
Despite all of that, I gave it a .75 stars. I’d read worse.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Rape