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A review by aigra
Stray by Andrea K. Höst
4.0
This is the giveaway I won and this is my little attempt at writing a review:
One minute Cassandra is on her way home from school, the next minute she finds herself in a place with plenty of vegetation and animal life, but no people. With no idea how she got there and therefor now idea how she can get back home, the only thing she can do is try to survive and find a human settlement. Eventually, she does find an empty village from where she is recued by the Setari, a kind of elite soldiers from a technically advanced planet.
Being rescued doesn't come with a trip back to Australia though, since her rescuers claim to have no knowledge of earth. Instead she is taken to their home planet, where the Setari find out, that Cass has some very useful talents ..
I had a good start with this book and the story pretty much drew me in from the first page. But by the time I had reached the middle of the book the story had become kind of slow and drawn out. Well, maybe slow isn't exactly the right word, because there are always things happening ... it's more that there's this sense of aimlessness once Cass starts her training with the different Setari squads. Also, I totally lost track of all the different characters. There are just too many unfamiliar names mentioned and eventually I just gave up and figured that I would notice sooner or later, who the important characters are, which worked fine.
Anyway, I had no idea where this would be going or if it would be going anywhere at all and I did get a bit bored with the story at that point. The story gets back on track eventually though and just when I got an idea of the direction it could be taking and when someone who might be important showed up on the scene the book ends.
It's been a while since I read a book that was written entirely in diary form and it's not my favourite type of narrative. For the most part, it worked all right for me here though, because Cass is a character who isn't too self-absorbed and who isn't prone to rambling either.
All in all, I liked the book. It feels like proper science fiction and not like a poor excuse to sell me an unoriginal cliché love story, which is the impression I got from way too many YA books recently. I was torn between a three and a four star rating and decided on four stars in the end, because this book left me wanting more.
One minute Cassandra is on her way home from school, the next minute she finds herself in a place with plenty of vegetation and animal life, but no people. With no idea how she got there and therefor now idea how she can get back home, the only thing she can do is try to survive and find a human settlement. Eventually, she does find an empty village from where she is recued by the Setari, a kind of elite soldiers from a technically advanced planet.
Being rescued doesn't come with a trip back to Australia though, since her rescuers claim to have no knowledge of earth. Instead she is taken to their home planet, where the Setari find out, that Cass has some very useful talents ..
I had a good start with this book and the story pretty much drew me in from the first page. But by the time I had reached the middle of the book the story had become kind of slow and drawn out. Well, maybe slow isn't exactly the right word, because there are always things happening ... it's more that there's this sense of aimlessness once Cass starts her training with the different Setari squads. Also, I totally lost track of all the different characters. There are just too many unfamiliar names mentioned and eventually I just gave up and figured that I would notice sooner or later, who the important characters are, which worked fine.
Anyway, I had no idea where this would be going or if it would be going anywhere at all and I did get a bit bored with the story at that point. The story gets back on track eventually though and just when I got an idea of the direction it could be taking and when someone who might be important showed up on the scene the book ends.
It's been a while since I read a book that was written entirely in diary form and it's not my favourite type of narrative. For the most part, it worked all right for me here though, because Cass is a character who isn't too self-absorbed and who isn't prone to rambling either.
All in all, I liked the book. It feels like proper science fiction and not like a poor excuse to sell me an unoriginal cliché love story, which is the impression I got from way too many YA books recently. I was torn between a three and a four star rating and decided on four stars in the end, because this book left me wanting more.