Zenith by Sasha Alsberg & Lindsay Cummings – Spoiler Free Review

Title: Zenith
Author: Sasha Alsberg & Lindsay Cummings
Series Name: The Androma Saga
Genre: YA Sci-Fi
Publication Date: Jan 16th, 2018
Pages: 534 (Hardcover)
Publishers: Harlequin Teen (Australia)
Rating:

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 shipor 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.

Okay, so this month is not going well! A DNF and now a book that I wanted to DNF but persevered with.

I received an eARC of this book, however, I only read about 25% on eBook and then swapped to the audiobook.

This is the worst eARC I have ever received. I usually don’t comment on the ARCs itself as I understand there can be errors and little mistakes but I couldn’t continue reading it, it was so bad! There were whole chapters that had barely any spaces between words! I just couldn’t do it! It took me forever trying to decipher what the hell was written! I’ll leave a couple screen caps below. But anyway, that is the reason I swapped to the audiobook.
*This did not affect my rating of any other part of my review though, it just pissed me off*

 

The cover is fine, I get it. It’s a star and its the cover for a sci-fi book. It’s also got some cool looking colours. Awesome. However, it has surfaced that this book looks like a pretty decent copy of a book called Zenith: The First Book of Ascension by Dirk Strasser, seriously, go have a look! It even has the same bloody name!

The writing is overly descriptive. So much so that it got annoying at times, we don’t need 5 words to describe one thing, in multiple sentences! They seemed to repeat the same thing multiple times for no apparent reason. There were also random terms and places that were mentioned and not explained in the slightest.

The world building was also kinda horrible. Nothing was really explained except for the war from the past, as that was mentioned every second chapter. There were so many planets and places mentioned that you start to lose track of the ones you are meant to care about. As for the characters, I’m not sure if they are human or alien or what. They have mostly human features as far as I can tell but they some have weird features like blue scales that heat up with different emotions and glows or some crap. And don’t forget the one character that has these cuff things on their wrists and as far as I could tell from the little bit of explanation right at the start of the book, they are there to keep her hands attached to her arms or something because she got hurt. I’m not even fully sure!! Like what the heck?! Oh, and she also has glowing eyes!!!!! WTF.

The plot was boring and uneventful. There was only a couple of things that happened and it was kinda predictable to some degree!

Okay, so I am someone that loves Multi-POV! However, this one was way too excessive. It would have been fine every now and then to get a POV from one of the other characters but most of the time the chapters from some of the characters were bloody pointless. Nothing happened at all in so many chapters, it was just basically the character thinking or just doing normal stuff. There were also times where the same event was used in more than one chapter, but coming from different POVs, which would be fine but in those cases, there was basically no extra info given! It was just the same shit repeated but from another angle. Like what the hell did I just have to read the same shit twice?!

Another note on the MC, Andi, is that a lot of people are saying she is a bad copy of the MC from Throne of Glass. As I have not read that one and don’t plan to, I can’t vouch for that, but I wanted to make you aware.

Andi/Androma/Bloody Baroness: For someone whose nickname is the ‘bloody baroness’ she wasn’t a very strong character. She was also a walking contradiction! She mourned and felt bad for the murders she committed but she still continued to murder and bloody enjoy it?! Sure there were times that she killed because herself or her crew were at risk, but there were times where it could have been avoided! She is also kinda a bitch and doesn’t always treat her friends very well.
Also, apparently she has PTSD and apparently it was done badly according to other reviews I have seen including ones from people that have PTSD.

I’m not really going to talk about the other characters as they are just dull and boring! Lira & Dex were the only ones with any history revealed properly as the other two girls, one couldn’t remember and the other refused to remember, so there was very little development for them at all. As for Dex, he was just a dick and Lira was made out to be that kinda casual but badass side character that everyone loves, but it fell way too short with the development.

Overall, the book was boring, undeveloped and poorly written. The world building was pitiful and the plot was nonexistent. The characters were poorly developed and either badly done or boring as hell. Overall I didn’t enjoy myself reading this book. The audiobook was probably the only thing I did enjoy as it had a full cast of voice narrators that were pretty good.

Also, check out this review THIS I found on Goodreads by an account called Alex Vega! It is perfect and also hilarious!

I was provided with an eGalley of this book in exchange for an honest review. Thank you very much to Harlequin Teen Australia & NetGalley for this opportunity.

You can Pre-Order this book from any of the below links.

Book Depository
Paperback  /  Hardback

QBD
Paperback

Dymocks
Paperback

Amazon (Aus)
Kindle  /  Paperback  /  Audible  /  Hardback  /  Audiobook CD

HAVE YOU READ THIS BOOK? WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON IT?!

IF YOU ARE GOING TO SHARE SPOILERS IN THE COMMENTS THEN PLEASE WARN IT SO OTHERS DON’T GET SPOILED!

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