The blurb as seen on Goodreads:
Release Date: February 25, 2014
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
240 Pages
On their way to start a new life, Tula and her family travel on the Prairie Rose, a colony ship headed to a planet in the outer reaches of the galaxy. All is going well until the ship makes a stop at a remote space station, the Yertina Feray, and the colonist's leader, Brother Blue, beats Tula within an inch of her life. An alien, Heckleck, saves her and teaches her the ways of life on the space station.
When three humans crash land onto the station, Tula's desire for escape becomes irresistible, and her desire for companionship becomes unavoidable. But just as Tula begins to concoct a plan to get off the space station and kill Brother Blue, everything goes awry, and suddenly romance is the farthest thing from her mind.
I
received an e-copy of this novel from the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for my honest opinion
and review.
Release Date: February 25, 2014Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
240 Pages
On their way to start a new life, Tula and her family travel on the Prairie Rose, a colony ship headed to a planet in the outer reaches of the galaxy. All is going well until the ship makes a stop at a remote space station, the Yertina Feray, and the colonist's leader, Brother Blue, beats Tula within an inch of her life. An alien, Heckleck, saves her and teaches her the ways of life on the space station.
When three humans crash land onto the station, Tula's desire for escape becomes irresistible, and her desire for companionship becomes unavoidable. But just as Tula begins to concoct a plan to get off the space station and kill Brother Blue, everything goes awry, and suddenly romance is the farthest thing from her mind.
Tin Star is a
story about revenge – plain and simple. Normally, I like me a good revenge
story. However this one made me want to gouge my eyes out from sheer boredom. Couple
that with the fact that I have to finish a book once I start, this read for a
loooong read with my pal Emily.
Tula has sworn revenge on a man named Brother Blue, a man
she trusted, but who left her for dead on an alien space station. As Tula
learns to survive amidst this alien race, she unravels more of the secrets
Brother Blue was keeping, along with the secrets hidden within space station. She
makes friends, allies – basically becomes one of them. Then a group of humans
arrive and throw everything into chaos.
This book was roughly 240 pages long and I felt every page.
I love sci-fi and fantasy books. One of the best parts is learning new worlds
and seeing how they work. This is where Tin
Star failed, horribly. There was no world building. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. The
beginning opens up with us on the Yertina Feray (the space station)
where Tula and Brother Bear, along with a colony of humans, are getting ready
to set sail onto another planet to set up a new home. That’s pretty much the
only backstory we get on anything. Nothing about how the world came to be this
way. No explanations on all of the different species. What little information
Castellucci gives, she shoves into one lengthy paragraph that leaves your head
spinning because it literally makes no sense.
On top of the nonexistent world building, there’s also the
lack of likeable characters. I’m not saying that all of the characters were
unlikeable, it’s just that we’re never given the chance to get to know them. We’re
told who they are and what species they are, but we never get a real feel for
them. In the beginning, I felt horrible for Tula but as time went on, I forgot
why.
I couldn’t connect with anything or anyone in this book. It
almost felt like this entire book was just a summarization of someone’s life,
not a story. If you want people to care, you need to put effort into it. I just
didn’t feel like there was any here.
Wow. I like a good revenge story too, and I thought this might be a good one (I mean, that cover is gorgeous!). Too bad it wasn't what you expected.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the honest review.