The Life Siphon by Kathryn Summerlot – Spoiler Free Review

Title: The Life Siphon
Author: Kathryn Sommerlot
Series Name: The Life Siphon
Genre: YA Fantasy
Publication Date: March 10th, 2017
Pages: 504 (iBook)
Publishers: Kindle Direct Publishing
Rating:

The kingdom of Runon has created the impossible: a magical energy source that siphons life from the nearby lands and feeds it back into Runon itself. On the edge of the forest lives a quiet ranger named Tatsu, who is watching the drain grow closer to his home country of Chayd.

Arrested for crimes against the crown, Tatsu is taken to the capital’s prison, where the queen offers him a deal. If he travels into Runon and steals the magical source that powers the drain, she will return his freedom. Caught in the unimaginable aftermath, Tatsu knows that the only hope is to stop the siphon before it swallows the world.

More and more, he finds himself at the mercy of the destruction the siphon leaves behind – and everything he has ever known will fall apart in the revelation of its horrifying truth.

I received a copy of this book through Story Cartel in Exchanged for an honest review.

I really like the cover of this book, it’s fairly simple and I like the colour scheme. I also enjoy how it links to the book.

The writing of this book was enjoyable. It was easy to understand and everything about the world was explained well. Some of the names of characters & places were hard to figure out how to pronounce and I still don’t know how to pronounce ‘Yudai’.

This book was a little predictable at times, there were a couple things that I guessed before they were shown in the book. It wasn’t enough to be annoying, but it was still a factor that I didn’t love.

There were also a few tropes in this book, I won’t mention which, but there were some common tropes that you come across often in YA fantasy.

I enjoyed the world building but I hope there is more if there is the next book. What we did learn though was interesting and described well. I also wish there was a map as it was hard to keep track when there was traveling involved.

The plot was enjoyable, but as I said before, a little predictable. This was an interesting plot and even though it contained some well-known tropes I still enjoyed it a lot.

The plot was fairly action packed and I didn’t want to put this book down. There were slower parts where we got to learn about certain characters which were nice as well.

Firstly I really enjoyed that this was from a male POV. So many YA fantasy/sci-fi/dystopian books I have read lately are from a female POV, so it was nice to have a change. I also like there was a male & male friendship in this book too. Again, a lot of books I have read lately are a female MC with a guy best friend. So for this, it was a refreshing book for that reason.

Tatsu was an interesting character, he was caring and would always try and do what he thought was right. Alesh kind of annoyed me for most of the book. I do like her love for her sister Ral though and what she would do for her. Ral I still don’t fully understand but she was always around and her happiness helped others at times. Yudai was probably my favourite character in this book, he was kind and caring but also a little spoiled and would automatically insult when he felt any type of threat, which was funny at times.

Overall I really enjoyed this book but there were a couple problems I had with it too. I hope this is a series and we will get a sequel as I want to know what happens next and also I want to see more of the world and learn more about it.

On Goodreads, this book is part of a series but there are no other books indicated in the series so we will have to see if this story continues!