Starflight
Ratings18
Average rating3.5
Great book! I was rapidly hooked to the characters and the story.There was always something happening to keep me interested. I loved the world building, the fights, the missions and the character developpement of everyone. I'm in for the second book in the series, I'm certain it will be great too! This was my first read from Melissa Landers and it did not dissapoint!
I will be reviewing this on my blog - check back in March 2017! - but brief notes?
Love the characters. There's not a single character aboard the Banshee that I don't simply adore and want to hug. Would have liked a little more science to go with my fiction, but I can't complain because we are traveling around on a SPACESHIP!
This book is so much fun. I'll be honest, it's not what I would call original. There's a lot of other books - and even one TV show - that it reminds me of. (Stitching Snow, The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet, the entire series of Tales of the Kety Jay and Firefly, to be exact.) But it is fun and has a couple of the most likable YA leads I've come across in quite a while.
At first, I was a little concerned about this book because, well, the first thing I learnt about it was that Solara sells herself into indentured servitude to the main guy. The guy who will be her love interest. To me, that sounded like the bad start to every abusive, possessive romance I've ever come across.
But, much to my happiness, I was wrong. We don't spend much time with a power imbalance in that direction - truthfully, not much of a power imbalance at all. And Solara is a tough girl, even if she sometimes doesn't want to be. Circumstances made her what she is and she takes care of herself and talks back to anyone that talks down to her.
Doran is, honestly, a total sweetheart. Oh, he's got a mouth on him and says some cruel things to Solara (and she gives as good as she gets) but - to avoid spoilers, let's just say that we have a chance to see what he'd be like with all this walls stripped away, and he is surprisingly insecure and vulnerable.
The romance between them is very slow moving. There's no instalove. There's not even instalike as they start off as enemies and it's a slow progression to friends and then an even slower progression to more than friends. (Which I loved!)
The supporting characters are wonderful, too. I loved the quirky crew of the Banshee - after all, spaceships need quirky crews. There's a very strong found family/made family feeling amongst them and I love that. It's probably one of my favorite things when people that don't really belong/fit anywhere else find a family of each other. A family of misfits.
The plot is interesting, but the characters are where this story's at. There're these tendrils that tie things together, but for a while, there seems to be no rhyme or reason to some of the stuff that happens. It's all there for a reason though - which in hindsight makes this book seem tightly plotted.
And there is always something happening. Dealing with pirates or broken machinery - or just the crew. (And the totally cute ship mascot, Acorn.)
(Originally posted on my blog: pagesofstarlight.blogspot.com)
This was fairly standard for your Melissa Landers romance, but there was a slight twist at the very end that I was not expecting which was nice. The next book is about Cassia and Kane so I'm really looking forward to that.