When I first saw this book my first thought was: gimmicky. It has a flashy bright orange cover and a quick flip through the pages will give you a dozen word art pages, sketches and designs for space ships, and a whole bunch of other little design features you don’t find in most novels. I’ve seen books like this before, where their cool mixed-media styles are like a venus fly trap. All pretty and enticing on the outside, but the inside? An unfortunate trap eating a piece of your soul instead. So, naturally I was hesitant. Plus, this book was everywhere at BEA. And I mean EVERYWHERE. Usually we had to fight people tooth and limb for a soft cover ARC that didn’t even have cover art yet, but there was this big, flashy hardcover ARC just sitting in piles whenever you turned a corner. It was suspicious, I tell you.
But clearly those big, suspicious piles meant that the publishers had a lot of faith in this book, and it was for a good reason. Everything flashy and somewhat gimmicky about this book had a purpose. They actually enhanced an amazing story, rather than being the only draw. And the story… I just want to throw this book at people. Crazy AIs, space chases, hacking, your mom jokes (ok, they were your sister jokes), rage zombies, espionage – what more do you want?
Katie and Ezra are cute. They start off in the middle of a break-up which could not be more fun, because a megacorporation accidentally scheduled an apocalypse at the same time. (This is what people are talking about when they ask “What’s the worst that could happen?”, isn’t it?) But the real star of the show is AIDAN the very broken AI. Struggling to keep everyone safe, he’s a little annoyed when people get hung up on his newly emerged murderous tendencies.
If you’re a fan of Firefly, 2001: A Space Odyssey, 28 Days Later, Event Horizon or any of those miner movies where they take on The Man, this is the book for you. You don’t have to be a sci-fi fan to enjoy it. It’s got enough romance and hacking and everything else to get you through.[/tab][/tabgroup]
