Starbleached

Starbleached #1

by Chelsea Gaither

Adrienne had one job when she came to Holton Develop a drug that will take humans off the Overseer menu. After working triage in Earth’s biggest space-port, this marathon of long nights, hot coffee (and even hotter research assistants) is a breeze…until she’s stranded on a hostile planet with an Overseer renegade. Now she has a one hell of a destroy her research, or die as a monster’s midnight snack. Well, she’ll be defiant to the last; all else fails, at least she’ll give the alien indigestion.


Then a plague strikes the humans on the renegade’s world. Adrienne will have to compromise with the Overseer on more than just vacation time. Because the space between stars isn’t always black-and-white…

Genres: Science Fiction

ebook

First published September 2, 2012

Reviews

[Chiasmintalia · Rating 2 out of 5]

I liked the blurb, but was disappointed by this book.

At first I thought there would be a couple of flashbacks from the past under the title of then and afterwards the story would stay focused on the now. Instead every chapter is a switch from the past to the present. It almost would have made more sense to have split this story into two parts so that the timeline is more streamlined.

I was interested in the research that Adry did with Bryan and would've liked the author to have spent more time developing the relationship between the two of them.

There's a twist about the identity of the rogue overseer and I disliked this because the twist caused Adry's perception of this overseer to change. It felt wrong to me that Adry was suddenly fine with interacting with him and even went so far as to give him some of her life energy. I didn't think that he had exactly earned her trust even if he had shown that he was unlike the rest of his kind. There wasn't enough to their interactions that justified to me her changes in attitude.

It was never fully explained why the rogue overseer captured Adry. He wanted to help with distribution of the enzyme that she had created? That desire would mean that he would be fine with crippling his race. I assume that the enzyme prevents what amounts to reproduction for the overseers. If the enzyme was given to every human then eventually the overseers would die off. That's pretty serious. The rogue overseer must have strong feelings (that he never mentioned) against his own kind... And why did he leave at the end? He said that he was happy being with Adry.

[Ilona Fenton · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was looking forward to this after reading the blurb and was mightily disappointed. It was a now and then book. As in each part was titled now or then and the whole thing kept jumping in an erratic manner. if the two timelines had had consistency it wouldn't have been too bad but then was (I think) over a year or so time span and even the now was (again, I think) over a month or two. I persevered, but it din't really make any sense timeline wise for me by the end of the book. I doubt if I'll bother reading any more of the series to answer certain questions the reader is left with the time hop is just to erratic for me.