Goodreads synopsis: THE SUN IS DEAD.
Humanity has moved deep underground.
The Lightbringers have reinvented electricity.
Their presence offers reassurance.
But some believe it's safer in the shadows.
Aniya Lyons has never forgiven the Lightbringers for the abduction of her brother. She’s overjoyed when he escapes and returns three years later, but he comes bearing a dark secret. Before he can share it with her, the Lightbringers steal him away again and murder their parents. Aniya is devastated, and she knows that she’s next.
So Aniya plunges into the dark tunnels of the Web, where savages and mutated beasts lie in wait. She despairs that there is no safe place to hide, that she will be running for the rest of her life. But there is a glimmer of hope. If she can make it to the Lightbringers’ Hub before they hunt her down, she may be able to sneak in and rescue her brother.
But the closer Aniya gets to the Hub, the closer she gets to discovering the horrible truth that led to the destruction of her family. The dark secret the Lightbringers would do anything to protect. And if she chooses to use this secret against them, it may carry unimaginable consequences and a great cost that Aniya may never be ready to pay.
My rating: 2 stars.
Content warnings: PG-13. Some violence, making out, and a scene of foreplay.
(spoilers ahead)
(spoilers ahead)
Thoughts: I read this book in two days, but it was still hard to get through. If that makes any sense. The only thing that got me through it was ranting to a friend about it every chapter or so.
The world itself seemed like it could have been really neat. I wanted more understanding of that world itself, and more of that world being a part of the story than it seemed to be. But the basis of the world was cool enough.
But that was about the only thing I thought was good about the story. Giving the benefit of the doubt, I do think it started off as an interesting idea. But the book as a whole seems like it could have benefited a lot from a good, professional editor, and a rewrite of a chunk of the book.
There were several times through the story that different characters would hallucinate, or have flashbacks, and these instances were almost impossible to distinguish from the actual action of the book, to the point that I was convinced a few characters had died, several different times, when it was just another character panicking and envisioning what would happen if they died. It was uncomfortable and jarring, and it made the rest of the book hard to figure out, since it was difficult to be sure when was reality and when was just in someone's mind. And this started from the very first paragraph, when it was written in a way that made it seem like the main character was seeing something she actually wasn't.
The characters themselves were all pretty one dimensional. The only one I eventually found someone intriguing was the love interest, and that only because he was working for the bad guys, and still was by the end of the book even though he had appeared to change. Even so, all of the characters only seemed to do what the plot demanded, because it demanded, and not because it was internally motivated by them in any way.
And the dialogue. Oh sweet mercy, the dialogue. I don't care what the fancy future setting is, real people do not talk like that, and especially not in situations like those the characters were in. That was almost worse than anything else.
Most of the time the flow and pacing of the story felt like the first draft of one of my stories, and that's not a comparison I had ever thought I'd make with a published story. The issue is it seems like just a bunch of stringing together bad things to happen, because they're bad things that can happen and it would "up the story tension," but without any real reason, or furtherance of the story other than things keep happening and characters keep moving. But in the end it's pretty directionless, and feels like a bunch of scenes just strung together for no reason other than they can be.
But all that being said, on some level I did kind of have fun reading it. I think it's right on the cusp of being so bad it's good, and that made some of it amusing to read.
I don't plan to read further. But if it wasn't self published and I could get a copy from the library, I would probably take a few hours to read the next books, just because on some level it was very amusing.
The world itself seemed like it could have been really neat. I wanted more understanding of that world itself, and more of that world being a part of the story than it seemed to be. But the basis of the world was cool enough.
But that was about the only thing I thought was good about the story. Giving the benefit of the doubt, I do think it started off as an interesting idea. But the book as a whole seems like it could have benefited a lot from a good, professional editor, and a rewrite of a chunk of the book.
There were several times through the story that different characters would hallucinate, or have flashbacks, and these instances were almost impossible to distinguish from the actual action of the book, to the point that I was convinced a few characters had died, several different times, when it was just another character panicking and envisioning what would happen if they died. It was uncomfortable and jarring, and it made the rest of the book hard to figure out, since it was difficult to be sure when was reality and when was just in someone's mind. And this started from the very first paragraph, when it was written in a way that made it seem like the main character was seeing something she actually wasn't.
The characters themselves were all pretty one dimensional. The only one I eventually found someone intriguing was the love interest, and that only because he was working for the bad guys, and still was by the end of the book even though he had appeared to change. Even so, all of the characters only seemed to do what the plot demanded, because it demanded, and not because it was internally motivated by them in any way.
And the dialogue. Oh sweet mercy, the dialogue. I don't care what the fancy future setting is, real people do not talk like that, and especially not in situations like those the characters were in. That was almost worse than anything else.
Most of the time the flow and pacing of the story felt like the first draft of one of my stories, and that's not a comparison I had ever thought I'd make with a published story. The issue is it seems like just a bunch of stringing together bad things to happen, because they're bad things that can happen and it would "up the story tension," but without any real reason, or furtherance of the story other than things keep happening and characters keep moving. But in the end it's pretty directionless, and feels like a bunch of scenes just strung together for no reason other than they can be.
But all that being said, on some level I did kind of have fun reading it. I think it's right on the cusp of being so bad it's good, and that made some of it amusing to read.
I don't plan to read further. But if it wasn't self published and I could get a copy from the library, I would probably take a few hours to read the next books, just because on some level it was very amusing.
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