Sci Fi – Sarah's Shelf

Happy new year everyone! I know I’ve been absent for a few months now, but I had a crazy-busy end of the year. But when I have the time, I always want to keep up this blog because I so enjoy sharing the books I read out into the world. But sort of in a whirlwind, I read three books at the first half of this year, and I have two more to read for my book club, so I’m consolidating these first few reviews this year into a comparison, because I could not have felt more differently about the first book I read vs the duology I read back-to-back.

My first book of the year was Blood, Metal, Bone by Lindsay Cummings, and the next books I read were The Storm Crow and The Crow Rider by Kalyn Josephson. I’m going to compare the different aspects of both of these stories and then give a final score to each at the end. Let’s get into it.

First, pacing. Blood, Metal, Bone is a standalone novel, which in my opinion means that the story should waste no time in grabbing your attention. Setup is important for any novel, of course, but when you have less than 500 pages to tell your entire story from start to finish, the action needs to start early or the characters have to make you care early on. Neither of which happened for me with this story. I found the pacing to be almost agonizingly slow, which does not bode particularly well, especially in the YA genre, where I expect to be grabbed early on. The Storm Crow, on the other hand, had action and tragedy strike quick, so not only was I invested in the narrator and what was going to happen to her from the get-go, but the inciting action set my expectations within the first fifty pages. I was hooked.

Next, characters. Blood, Metal, Bone had a mid-size cast of characters, and two very different narrators. Normally, I don’t mind a split narrator situation, in fact I often write stories that way myself, two different perspectives can add a lot. However, in this case, I didn’t really care for either of the narrators, and I felt like one of them was the main narrator and the other one was sort of added in there as an afterthought, since I would say that probably 2/3 of the book was in one narrator’s perspective and 1/3 was in the other’s. It gave sort of an unbalenced feel. The Storm Crow duology was told entirely from a single perspective, and in this case I felt like it added to the attachment I felt to the narrator and kept me invested in the main storyline. The cast of the Storm Crow duology was also smaller, and while I do often enjoy a large cast story, I find with many small cast stories I care much more deeply about the outcomes of each one because the time is dedicated in the story to make me care about them.

Next, worldbuilding/genre. In Blood, Metal, Bone, I believe the author was going for a bit of a genre blend, but I don’t believe it was particularly successful and just left me feeling as though this book has a bit of a identity crisis. The prologue sort of tricks the reader into believing it’s a fantasy, but then all of the sudden in chapter one, the narrator changes and the book is suddenly set in space, turning it into a sci-fi somehow? And then we switch back to the original narrator and she’s this kind of desert outlaw, and the book then tries to read like a western? Too much, in my opinion. Pick one or two. I think if the author had made it more clearly a sci-fi from the first page, it would have been simply a space-western, and that could have been more successful. And since the genre was so confused, that left the world-building all over the place and I never had a clear connection with the setting at all. With Storm Crow, it was relatively simple yet fun fantasy world with giant, intelligent crows that have elemental magic. I think Josephson did a pretty good job with giving a history and backstory to the magic and mythology, and then having that become relevant in the second book.

Finally, overall story/endings. I’ll keep it spoiler free, but try to give as much detail as I can. For Blood, Metal, Bone, the prologue sets you up with this kind of mystery from the very beginning, which is honestly the whole reason I read this book to the very end. There is so much lead up to the discovery of this mystery, and the truth ends up being, in my opinion, a huge letdown. The ending also takes a bit of a wild turn, and not in a good way. I found myself to be pretty dissatisfied with the resolution of both the plot and the characters. For Storm Crow, I liked the story pretty much immediately, and am very happy with how it ended. My one gripe is that it did contain a love triangle, particularly in the first book, which is not my favorite trope, but it did end up resolving in a way that I was very happy with (both the love triangle and the story overall).

It should come as a surprise to nobody after reading this that the Storm Crow duology was a clear favorite. I gave the first book in the Storm Crow series a 4/5 and the second a 5/5, because I was hooked from beginning to end and absolutly devoured the series in about five days total. Blood, Metal, Bone, on the other hand, I almost DNF’d (did not finish), and only really kept going because I didn’t want to set a bad precident for my first book of the year, and also I was sort of invested in the resolution of that mystery, which ended up being a big letdown. I gave that one a 2/5, because I did indeed finish it.

So in the end, I can’t recommend Blood, Metal, Bone, but highly recommend the Storm Crow duologies for fans of YA fantasy that enjoy a quick, engaging read. I also felt as though the Storm Crow books gave a really realistic, thoughtful representation of grief, PTSD, and a character with depression.

P.S. I probably won’t do many of these comparison-style reviews and will return to my traditional formatting, but if you enjoyed this side-by-side review, please let me know and I’ll throw some more in there. As always, thanks for reading, and let me know if you agree or disagree with my assessments, I always love discourse.

If you enjoyed the Storm Crow duology, try:

Ash Princess by Laura Sebastian

Defy by Sara B. Larson

Spin the Dawn by Elizabeth Lim

The Glass Spare by Lauren Destephano

# of Pages: 382

Time it took me to read: 7 days

# of pages a day to finish in a week: 54

Rating: 3 out of 5

Darrow has the life he has always imagined for himself. He’s a Helldiver, the most dangerous job in the underground mines of Mars where his caste, the Reds, live. But the job comes with prestige and respect, and he’s married to the girl of his dreams, Eo, and lives surrounded by his family. But Eo has always dreamed of there being more in life than working the mines, watching their families, their people, die so very young due to the hard, dangerous nature of their work.

When Darrow and Eo get caught somewhere they shouldn’t be, Darrow never dreams that it will change his life forever. Because just as he thinks all is lost, someone finds him. A rebel sect that tells him everything he’s ever been told about his life and his purpose is a lie. Suddenly he is given an opportunity: make Eo’s dream a reality, and infiltrate the highest caste of their Society: the Golds, who are the perfect embodiment of human creation down to their very DNA. But if Darrow wants a chance at revenge and lifting his people from the underground mines of Mars, he must become a Gold both physically and mentally. Because then, they’ll never see him coming until it’s too late.

Review (Spoiler Free!):

Okay, I’ll say it. I really didn’t want to like this book. In fact, I was convinced I hated it until about half way through. But it’s a book for my book club so I had to finish it and now here we are. I gave this book a 3 out of 5, but really it was probably closer to a 3.5 or a 4, but since I don’t give half stars and I simply could not bring myself to give it a 4, I had to settle at 3.

I’ll start by telling you that this really isn’t my genre. Even though the protagonist, Darrow, is between 16 and 18 through the story, this is not YA. It was in the adult Sci-Fi section of the bookstore, and is certainly written in the adult style, not the YA style. And it’s Sci-Fi, of which I read very little, so I didn’t think I would like it in the first place. But I’m trying to diversify, and my book club voted on this book fair and square.

Let’s begin with pacing. This was one of the slower paced books I’ve ever read. 382 pages dragged, I had to read the book around 50 pages at a time all the way until the last hundred or so when I was finally able to push hard through it. The first 50 pages in particular does that thing, you know, that a lot of Sci-Fi (and some hard fantasy) books do where they spend the first 50-100 pages completely info-dumping you into the world. The second 50 pages is a bit better, but still a tough read. If I could rate the first 100 pages separately from the rest of the book, I’d give them a 1 out of 5 and the rest of the book a 4. I’m pretty convinced that this book is objectively slow-paced, but I’ll admit that my opinion that it was a complete sludge to get through is probably subjective. If you’re into this genre, it probably isn’t so bad.

So here I am, 100 pages in, and I’m convinced I’m going to hate this book from start to finish. Because up until now all that has happened is the catalyst to the rest of the story buried in very in-depth Sci-Fi explanations and lingo. But then, all of the sudden, this book stops reading like a Sci-Fi I can’t wrap my head around and starts reading like dystopia. It gets VERY Hunger Games-esque, very fast. And all of the sudden, pretty much against my will, I find myself on board. I would have bet money at 100 pages in that never in a million years would the plot hook me by the end, but I would have lost that money. Because not only did the plot hook me, but by the end of the book I found myself completely immersed in the story, staying up too late on a work night to finish it, almost like I’d do with a book I actually enjoyed. Go figure.

However, as much as I did end up enjoying the plot by the end, there were a few parts of this book that I have to rant about because I did not like at all. First off, the style. Ugh, the first 50-100 pages the writing was so stylized that I felt like I was rolling my eyes and gagging through most of it. Not only was the sci-fi lingo almost unintelligible from the very first page, but the way the dialogue was written was so incredibly strange, almost like someone put English through Google Translate into a completely different language, and then had Google Translate it back to English. But the even weirder part…like half way through the book they just…stop talking weird. Like, any kind of “dialect” that the author created just kind of…went away. Except for a few random moments that felt purposeful, the rest of the dialogue was normal. Super duper strange. Like, I feel like if you’re going to commit to the unique dialect, you have to go all in, or not do it at all. This half-and-half thing seemed wishy-washy.

Also, and this is definitely a personal opinion that I get is pretty snobby, but the author kind of tried to pull some Greco-Roman (mostly Roman) themes in there with each of the Gold houses being like “House Venus” and “House Jupiter”. But it kinda just felt like the author cracked open one book about the Roman gods, skimmed it, and then decided to try and make it a whole thing. I think he should have either made something up entirely his own, or just gone real big with it. But again…kinda wishy-washy.

And finally, probably one of my biggest pet peeves (particularly since I ended up being hooked by the plot in the end), is that I do not like Darrow. I think he is a boring, pretentious character who doesn’t go through any earned or engaging arc. I was far more engaged by some of the side characters, though many of them annoyed me too. Besides like one female character, I felt like all the female side characters were plot devices, which is honestly pretty typical of many male sci-fi and fantasy writers that I’ve read (at least in adult). I found Eo, Darrow’s young wife, way more interesting and wish she would have been more involved in the overall story. But like I said…plot device. I’m particularly peeved because it sucks for me as a reader to be engaged enough in the story that I’m going to pick up the sequel, because while I am rooting for Darrow’s cause and am engaged by the events that surround him, I am not rooting for Darrow and honestly, truly, would not care if he died in the end. It’s always mildly unpleasant/uncomfortable for me to read a book where I care about the plot but not the characters.

Regardless, I’ll pick up the sequel at some point (it’s a completed trilogy), and I’ll see if I enjoy the second book enough to finish the whole series.

I’d say, if you’re a fan of adult Sci-Fi or even a fan of Hunger Games style “fight to the death game” type stories, you could give this one a try. I think a lot of what I didn’t like about this book was subjective, I don’t think that Pierce Brown is a bad writer or anything, I just wouldn’t call myself a fan and probably wouldn’t have finished this book had it not been for my book club.

If you liked Red Rising, try:

Zenith by Sasha Alsberg & Lindsay Cummings

Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

The Diabolic by SJ Kincaid

Carve the Mark by Veronica Roth

Tag: Sci Fi

A Tale of 3 Books: Blood, Metal, Bone vs The Storm Crow Duology

Red Rising by Pierce Brown (Book 1)