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A review by rplusd
Fire In The Stars by Mitchell Thomas Kazajian, Shelley Mascia, Isabella Rogge
3.0
I'm about to toss a lot of shade and mixed feelings at this book. It's pretty much The Lord of the Flies meets The Hunger Games' Catching Fire. Maybe some Death Cure from The Maze Runner series too, just a Frankenstein of those concepts and ideas.
It makes the action in this pretty nonstop and fast paced. I can see where time was spent putting this together. Though even with that care, I still can't say that I liked it? It felt a bit like a rough draft. If a beta or just a little more editing went into it, I might have enjoyed it more.
But three stars isn't bad on my scale! It's just a disclaimer on that you might like it, but it's not so much my cup of tea.
When I first picked this up, I didn't fully realize that it was self published. In terms of rating, that hardly matters. But as I was reading it just becomes more and more increasingly clear that it was.
Some time ago I read an article about writing do's and don't. Now, typically, I don't agree that "good writing" can be defined into a bullet pointed list, as it depends on the author. But I kept thinking back on how it noted that dialogue should be no longer than three sentences unless other wise needed. Yet, even then, it still needs to broken up. So, Frank, that tidbit was for you.
Otherwise, as far as the typos I found - and I confess that I am in no position to criticize. But when you make a mistake on your own character's name? How do you not catch that? And then to have such obvious mistakes that anybody reading this would catch. Like a sentence that starts off one way before repeating itself in a different tense. As if someone had already made an edit and forgot to use the delete button to remove the old line.
Then, sorry not sorry, what really makes me cringe is that there's a bio for the editor in the back of the book. So I'm questioning if things were changed after they looked at this or if money should be returned.
All that aside, the plot itself is so reliant on steps in a sequence that it's pretty guessable. So okay, cliches are cliches and I don't mind when they're done well. But half of this still had me going "but WHY?". Which is annoying because yes, I can see how it moves the plot along but also no, it's questionable and excessive.
I mean does Frank and the beachers have to be THAT brutal? All that mass murder without any real pay off? Also, can I point out that the "mutes", a nick name for the "mutants" DO NOT have useless powers?
Clint and Frank are up there laughing about some guy who can breathe under water and another who can glow. Are those things really useless when you're surrounded by water with food swimming around in it and nights of unlit darkness. Hmmmmm...
So just stuff like that was so furiously annoying to me. But again, like I said before, the book as a whole is not bad. I do also want to point out this might be the first asexual rep I've ever read, which kudos. And it's not painful or difficult to read. At most, I just kept side eyeing everything.
It makes the action in this pretty nonstop and fast paced. I can see where time was spent putting this together. Though even with that care, I still can't say that I liked it? It felt a bit like a rough draft. If a beta or just a little more editing went into it, I might have enjoyed it more.
But three stars isn't bad on my scale! It's just a disclaimer on that you might like it, but it's not so much my cup of tea.
When I first picked this up, I didn't fully realize that it was self published. In terms of rating, that hardly matters. But as I was reading it just becomes more and more increasingly clear that it was.
Some time ago I read an article about writing do's and don't. Now, typically, I don't agree that "good writing" can be defined into a bullet pointed list, as it depends on the author. But I kept thinking back on how it noted that dialogue should be no longer than three sentences unless other wise needed. Yet, even then, it still needs to broken up. So, Frank, that tidbit was for you.
Otherwise, as far as the typos I found - and I confess that I am in no position to criticize. But when you make a mistake on your own character's name? How do you not catch that? And then to have such obvious mistakes that anybody reading this would catch. Like a sentence that starts off one way before repeating itself in a different tense. As if someone had already made an edit and forgot to use the delete button to remove the old line.
Then, sorry not sorry, what really makes me cringe is that there's a bio for the editor in the back of the book. So I'm questioning if things were changed after they looked at this or if money should be returned.
All that aside, the plot itself is so reliant on steps in a sequence that it's pretty guessable. So okay, cliches are cliches and I don't mind when they're done well. But half of this still had me going "but WHY?". Which is annoying because yes, I can see how it moves the plot along but also no, it's questionable and excessive.
I mean does Frank and the beachers have to be THAT brutal? All that mass murder without any real pay off? Also, can I point out that the "mutes", a nick name for the "mutants" DO NOT have useless powers?
Clint and Frank are up there laughing about some guy who can breathe under water and another who can glow. Are those things really useless when you're surrounded by water with food swimming around in it and nights of unlit darkness. Hmmmmm...
So just stuff like that was so furiously annoying to me. But again, like I said before, the book as a whole is not bad. I do also want to point out this might be the first asexual rep I've ever read, which kudos. And it's not painful or difficult to read. At most, I just kept side eyeing everything.