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Saturday, July 2, 2016

Book Review: Zenith (The Androma Saga, #1) by Sasha Alsberg and Lindsay Cummings

Author: Sasha Alsberg and Lindsay Cummings
Publisher: Mirabel Inc.
Pages: 62
Format: E-book
Published: June, 2016
Price: $1.99 -> Rp26.044 (Amazon)
Rating: 2 / 5 stars

Date started: June 30, 2016 - Date finished: July 1, 2016

Synopsis:
There is darkness sweeping across the stars. 

Most know her as the Bloody Baroness, the captain of a fearsome glass starship called The Marauder. Androma and her crew strike terror in the hearts of those who cross them amongst the many corners of the Mirabel Galaxy. 

When a routine mission goes rogue, the all-female crew is captured by a bounty hunter from Andi’s past and forced into a job that could, quite literally, start a war that will devour worlds. 

Meanwhile, on the far side of the galaxy, the ruthless ruler Nor waits in the shadows of the planet Xen Ptera, biding her time. The final pieces are about to fall into place, liberating a plan that will tear Mirabel in two. 

As the Marauder hurtles toward the unknown, there is one lesson that proves to be true: No one can be trusted in a galaxy that runs on lies and illusion. 

From internet sensation Sasha Alsberg and multi-genre author Lindsay Cummings comes a new serialized space opera, full of action, intrigue, and steamy star-crossed romance. 

Perfect for fans of Hugh Howie, Sarah J Maas, and Beth Revis.
Review:
Androma Racella or Andi is a space pirate, she is known across the Mirabel galaxy as the Bloody Baroness. Andi is the captain of the Marauder alongside her all girl crew: An Adhiran descent Lira, her second-in-command who is also the pilot of the ship; Breck, the muscle of the crew; and Gilly, a girl who somewhat look like an innocent little girl but is actually quite lethal. One day, when they were planning to go to Vacilis to do a job it turns out that there were others following them. It turns out that the people following them were Mirabel patrolmen and someone from Andi's past, Dex.

Dex is the top bounty hunter in Mirabel and he also has a past with Andi. When Andi first found out that it was Dex who caught her and her crew, she was furious and even tried to kill her. Later she found out that he was just sent by someone to catch her, he was sent by Governor Cyprian, the man who has been after Andi all these years. When Andi knew that it was Governor Cyprian who caught her she was sure she's about to die but that isn't what happened. The governor actually wanted to offer Andi a job to retrieve his son Valen who has been presumed missing all these years with no trace or clue whatsoever regarding his whereabouts, but the governor is sure that Valen is in Xen Ptera.

And took the job, since she had no choice, it was either take the job or die and it does help sweeten the deal since the governor promised a full pardon for Andi and her crewmate if she succeeded in retrieving Valen. Xen Ptera is a dangerous place and she is off to do a dangerous mission accompanied by the one person she despises the most in all of Mirabel, Dex.
"You were never caught," Cyprian said, his voice low, "but I knew it was you. That is what you do, Andi. You leave a path of chaos in your wake, and you don't ever look back to see whose lives were ended because of it." His green eyes flashed at her.
When I found out that Sasha of abookutopia, one of my favorite booktubers is releasing a book you can bet your ass I'm going to read it and she co-wrote it with Lindsay Cummings who I hear some pretty good things about from her book, The Murder Complex. I was stoked when it was finally released, I immediately read it and was not so happy when it ended. Let me tell you why.

First, this book did not give me any feels whatsoever. Literally nothing. Throughout reading it from page one to the last page, the expression on my face didn't change at all, I was keeping a straight face from start to finish. It was just sort of "meh" all and all and I think the reason why is that this is the first book/part in a series, and in fantasy books we all know it means the introduction of characters and the world building is all jammed up in here. Also, I think it can also be attributed to the fact that this book was so short, it's only 62 pages so obviously not a lot happened in this first book.

Second, I feel like world set-up wasn't done quite so smoothly. I found this line in the book that said "On a good day, the Marauder and her crew could lose a tail as dash as a Xen Pterran Darowak could fly" but in this book there's no mention on what a Xen Pterran Darowak actually is, so that reference wasn't translated well to the readers since the authors didn't tell the readers about it. I do think that the world is great and could be dug deeper and explored more, it has a potential to be a great world. But despite of that, it was quite easy imagining Mirabel, usually immersing yourself as a reader in a fantasy book is the hard part but I managed to absorb the information well.
Androma was good at what she did. But so was Dex.
Besides, a prodigy could only outrun her master for so long.
There are also positives on this book obviously. So, this book is written in multiple perspectives and in third person. There's Andi's perspective and Dex's perspective, what I like about this book is that when reading both perspectives we can tell which is Andi's and which is Dex's because they have distinct voices and we all know this means that the writing is great. I can only assume that Sasha wrote one perspective and Lindsay wrote the other, but don't quote me on this because I might be wrong and just being a smartass.

I also learned a new word from this book, which is "fike", I can only assume that fike is a curse word in Mirabel because I associate fike with the word we are all familiar with, f-u-c-k. I might be wrong but it does sound similar to it and when the characters in this book were using the word fike in their dialogues it kind of seemed like they were swearing. So yeah, fike! It's gonna be a new swear word.

I do hope that the next installment in the series will be more action-packed because that is how I like my fantasy books to be.

That's all for now!

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