Review: Zenith by Sasha Alsberg & Lindsay Cummings

Publication Date: January 16th 2018
Publisher: Harlequin Teen
Series: (The Androma Saga #1)
Source: Review Copy from Publisher

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Blurb:
Most know Androma Racella as the Bloody Baroness, a powerful mercenary whose reign of terror stretches across the Mirabel Galaxy. To those aboard her glass starship, Marauder, however, she's just Andi, their friend and fearless leader.

But when a routine mission goes awry, the Marauder's all-girl crew is tested as they find themselves in a treacherous situation and at the mercy of a sadistic bounty hunter from Andi's past.

Meanwhile, across the galaxy, a ruthless ruler waits in the shadows of the planet Xen Ptera, biding her time to exact revenge for the destruction of her people. The pieces of her deadly plan are about to fall into place, unleashing a plot that will tear Mirabel in two.

Andi and her crew embark on a dangerous, soul-testing journey that could restore order to their ship or just as easily start a war that will devour worlds. As the Marauder hurtles toward the unknown, and Mirabel hangs in the balance, the only certainty is that in a galaxy run on lies and illusion, no one can be trusted.

Thank you to the publishers for offering me a copy of this novel in exchange for my full and honest review. I went into this novel not knowing much about it, except that Sasha Alsberg, a booktuber who I have watched for many years, was one of the co-writers and that it was set in space! So naturally, I was semi- excited going into this book.....little did I know what was to come.

Also preface, there will be slightly spoiler-ish mentions in this review so if you have not read the novel and would not like to be spoiled, do not read on. If you don't care about spoilers or have read the book, please continue!

So, as said above I didn't really know much about the plot of the novel going into the book....and that's kind of how I felt coming out of it too! 

When I started the novel and found out about this all female crew of badass murderers I was like heck yes sign me up! But then the whole amazing concept was kinda ruined and not delved into well at all. So the crew are basically introduced as Andi, the main character, getting pages of introduction descriptions and the rest of the crew being introduced and described in maybe less than a sentence? I mean these are our core characters and to be honest I'm not even sure what some of them even look like! 

Lira gets a semi-okay description, she has scales, is a pilot and has been brought up to suppress her emotions as they make her scales over heat. Gilly is a murderous 9 year old with red hair, and Breck is a giant....with no other personality traits described. The character building was just awful. I think Breck could have been such a great character but she wasn't described at all, given any character traits apart from her friendship with Gilly and I'm not even sure if she spoke in the novel at all. 

I mean, I went into it thinking "okay, badass murdering criminal girl gang" but then got a scene around one of the crew getting in trouble for swearing....um? 

Honestly the entire crew read as being the same character and I had no idea who was who. I don't even think they had any distinguishable characteristics. The crew also do not live up to their potentially awesome story as the premise around them being murdering bad-ass's is kinda ruined by them whining about feeling incredibly guilty for killing people, even bad guys, even though they have to do it to survive.

I thought the android Alfie could have been an interesting addition but then he was hardly used in the novel. 

So, Dex. The supposed "love interest" of the novel.....all I have to say is nope. Dex was just so incredibly creepy and off-putting form the moment he was introduced (WHAT IS WITH ALL THE CREEPY WINKING?!) and continued to be increasingly creepy and just plain confusing as the novel went on. I mean Dex started off as the bad guy, he basically forced himself onto the ship and tried to steal it from everyone and then 3 days and a few winks later he says he feels like the crew is his "family" and everyone loves him now.....I  think I completely missed that memo. 

The romance of the novel was just non existent. I didn't feel any spark between Dex and Andi or even connect to him at all. I felt so distance from this "love story" aspect to the novel because it felt so wrong and unfitting. (Also the part where Dex forces himself on Andi and kisses her...not cool.)

The plot of Zenith was just all over the place. It was constant movement from one aspect to another to another and just so jarring and difficult to read. There was no real suspense to the plot, I never felt like I was excited or shocked by many aspects of the novel. I didn't feel there was much action. The writing and descriptions read as very odd to me, odd use of descriptions and clumpy dialogue was far fetched. The writing style was jarring and made me feel distanced from the novel when reading. 

The world building was .....actually what world building? There was none at all and I was really looking forward to some space and galactic world building but nope. To be honest I don't even think the Mirabel was explained at all. I really wanted to know more about space setting and the inter-planetary political system but nope we didn't really get any world building or explanations.
There was no flow at all to the novel. It read like one thing is happening and now this is happening, insert odd simile and description and random character who has metal sticking out of them and webbed feet! With no explanation. It felt just very random and all over the place.  

Also what the heck is moon chew? Like is Lira just addicted to chewing tobacco or is she some hard core space drug addict? I'm almost hoping for the latter as it may make the story even mildly more interesting

The book also had the same plot points and dialogue being repeated in chapters but oh wow "from a different point of view!" Which was so annoying because we already know this has happened and it was just constantly boring the reader.
The novel also had incredibly odd dialogue...just so wooden, un-friendly and oddly robotic formal. The girls are supposed to be best friends and they speak so oddly to each other like "Androma how are you today?" "Oh Gilly, my friend, I am wonderful how are you?" just extremely clumpy awkward dialogue and clumpy repetitive odd sentence structure. It felt very off putting to the reader. 

I read the first 200 pages an then was so bored I basically skim read the rest.The ending was slightly interesting but in comparison to the rest of the book? A good 15 pages can not make up for 500+ pages of utter boredom. The book was overall extremely disappointing and not what I was hoping for at all. I don't think I will read the sequel, but we will see. Still feel so proud for Sasha to publish a novel after being very open about her dyslexia struggle. Publishing a novel is a wonderful achievement.