i love the new covers so much more lol
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Actual rating: 3.5
Y'know, the concept of futuristic societies in space isn't all the original. Neither are robots. So I didn't really expect anything from this book. But, I've only read so many science fiction novels in my young lifetime, so what can I really say about originality?
This book, it's hard to explain for me. Basically, you have two main characters in play: a synth, #1001, and a smuggler, Caleb.
Synths are their world's robots. Made by Chitec, the rich spend money to become this flawless being (with silver hair, I believe) to prolong their life. They're given the human's memories so the synths can live at ease with the families. There are exactly one thousand synths per century. No more, no less.
So #1001's existence is kinda, sorta problematic. She isn't supposed to exist. She's dangerous and hazardous and if word got out, it would be chaotic. She also knows how to kill and will not hesitate, soooo. Yeah, mess with her, you're kinda screwed.
Caleb looks out for himself first and his ship, Starscreamer second. He runs an illegal items based job—and that definitely could've been worded better—that he hopes will help him earn enough credits. He likes being with women, drinking his problems away, and thinks with his dick most—if not all—of the time.
In short—again—Caleb, to me, is a vapid and uninteresting character, whereas #1001 is a somewhat complex and intelligent being. I looked forward to her chapters more because they offered a more action-y take on the story, instead of a horny one.
As you can tell, this isn't my type of book. I'm YA based and this certainly isn't YA. Caleb certainly does not make this YA material. I'm not...completely comfortable with the material, nor am I completely familiar with the material in NA but I'm testing the waters. And this wasn't a bad book for testing—on the contrary, I actually found it enjoyable enough that I finished it in one sitting in the middle of the night and kinda jumped into the second right away. The only problem about this book—this series—is that it leaves holes and admittedly, could use some editing.
The writing, on a general view, isn't all that bad. It's kind of simplistic but descriptions aren't poorly done. You don't feel as if the characters are one dimensional—they have a voice you can associate with them. Another thing—yes, it has two POVs and yes, you can differentiate the them. More often than not, authors who do this make the main characters sound alike, and, in the end result, you can't tell who's actually telling the story in a certain chapter. The voices of Caleb and #1001 differentiate, seeing as one is hella colloquial and the other one is a fucking robot. One curses and is in no way chill about his desires where the other is more or less precise about everything. I liked that.
What I couldn't like is that, sometimes, the story fell a bit short. Some scenes were brushed over too quickly when it needed more depth to it. Some situations needed more explaining. It wasn't hard to keep up with what was going on, you're just kinda left feeling like "... Is that all?" in the end.
I also didn't like how Caleb let his parts rule over everything. I get that he's not the most thought-based person, but dude, seriously. You can't even blame this on hormones. One second, he has the situation in either his control or against him, but then he's suddenly turned on by whatever asset the female counterpart has to offer. It's irrational. This is either an accurate portrait—which I kinda doubt; you can't be wanting sex when you're in big trust worthy or life-or-death shit—or Caleb just has no self control.
This is a fairly short book, so it doesn't have a whole lot of room for character development, but I think it happened, especially on #1001's part. When a robot starts questioning, you know you're screwed.
Overall... I was okay with this book. I mean, I suppose I was. I remember wanting to finish this before 5 am so I could get a decent amount of sleep. It was really entertaining, I'll give it that. With a bit more depth, this would've been a really good read!
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A review of this should be coming. Thank you to the author for sending me a copy!