I received this book for free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

 

Unsettling at first but once you get used to all the jargons used in this book, you’ll find yourself having a hard time in putting it down. The basic premise is that the age of humans is coming to an end when the crosses (term for human/alien hybrids) that they’ve made—through vat culture—rallied  together and started a resistance . Our female protagonist, Jaqi, who is a cross herself wanted nothing to do with the war and had spent her life in hiding and doing shady stuff.  But just like the girl of destiny, she suddenly found herself in the thick of it all. Then, we have our male protagonist who is also a cross and a high ranking soldier of the resistance. Plus, he’s suffering from a terrible PTSD to the point that he got addicted to drugs.

 

It’s pretty interesting to follow the story particularly that we have these seemingly underdog hybrid crosses (who were once treated as machines and servants by the superior human race) made a reversal of their pitiful lives and are now doing everything to wipe out their overlords, the humans.  I think it would have been more interesting if the book gave me a chance to know our characters (main or supporting) more because the way Ellsworth wrote them made me feel like I was just scratching the surface.

 

Also, I didn’t buy the idea of Jaqi throwing out all of her rules out the window for a couple of kids she just met. It just didn’t compute with her happy-go-lucky and always on the run personality.  Personally, it’d made more sense if she had just left the kids to die and maybe…the author should’ve used another and more realistic way to trigger the events of the book.

 

Another thing that I wished for this book is for a more comprehensive world-building given the ambitiousness of the whole story. There’s a galactic war to raze the human race to extinction, a Dark Zone threating to swallow the whole universe, and hate-filled alien/human hybrids who, instead of using high-powered ammo, wield swords that suck the memories of its victims.  There a lot of things worth showing in this book and I hope that Ellsworth will do such in the sequels.

 

All in all, I’m really glad to have given A Red Peace a try. It may not be as intense as Luke Skywalker discovering that he’s a Jedi but it’ll surely feed your sci-fi hunger. I’m looking forward to read the next book in the series.

I have the cover half colored - and that's where the extra two stars come from.   Yes, I'm not going to show it because I"m embarrassed that I didn't make Starfire orange enough.  She's supposed to look like Snooki, and she looks normal.   *facepalm*

 

But it was fun to color anyway!   And I'm not sure if robots are raining down on her or what, but I made them into silver robot things.  I like thinking that, so please don't disillusion me if it's not the case.  

 

That being said, this was painful.   I know Starfire is supposed to be innocent of the world of man.   That is, she doesn't really understand the way things work.   It's supposed to be funny, and it normally is.   It came off as stilted here, and the whole sex-obsessed thing didn't work for me.   Then again, I mostly know her from TV shows that were supposed to be kid friendly, so...

 

It just felt crass, mostly because everything revolved around sex jokes or relationships.   It might have been funny if there was any kind of character development at all.   And I like these writers.  This whole thing just felt flat for me.  

 

Well, at least there's that cover!  I can't wait to finish coloring this, and I hope to get it done this weekend. 

The comic book fan in me is appalled.   The part of me that loves to color is like YESSSSS!

I enjoyed Starfire, by Paul Preuss. It does drift into ‘hard’ sci-fi, but over all, it was an easy read, and ‘soft’ sci-fi fans won’t get bored.

There were a few dated references, but that’s to be expected for a thirty-year-old novel. Another aspect that frustrated me was about three or four lengthy flashbacks that just didn’t seem to help the story. I can appreciate the author trying to fill in the back-story to a few characters, but they derailed the story. I found myself angrily swiping pages to get through the boring back-story. On the final flashback, I just skimmed until it was obvious the flashback was over. It seemed almost as if the flashbacks were shoehorned in to reach a word or page count.

I really love the paperback cover. It fits the story perfectly and makes sense during the read. I don’t know if the art didn’t have the proper license, but the new electronic edition art, while it conveys that this is a sci-fi space adventure, just doesn’t work as good as the 1988 cover. (I grin when I see the 80s-style title font.)

I’m not too worried about spoiling a thirty-year-old book, so I’ll say that this space disaster is reminiscent of movies like Armageddon or Gravity.

I’m on the fence on this one in terms of star rating. It’s a great read, but the flashbacks just made me angry. If I did half stars, I’d say 3.5 stars, but for the purpose of Amazon and Goodreads, I’m gonna award it that extra half and say four-stars. If you’re a sci-fi fan, you’ll like this book.

 

They've been coming here for thousands of years, using Earth as a sanctuary to escape threats from their own kind. Mankind knows them as angels, and one of them left a child upon her death to be raised as a human.

Raea is now a high school senior and her life as a human is about to end. The crystal shard she bears is not a pretty pendant; it's a collective of powerful entities who chose her as their Keeper, a protector of one of the four shards that power a machine capable of destroying whole worlds. Those who desire the Starfire's power have sent an agent to find her, but she's too busy evading a nosy reporter ready to exploit her secret and dating a hot new foreign student to notice. Nevermind learning what she really is.

Only one person on Earth can help her, the last person she ever expected. But he's not from Earth. Life as a human would be so much easier.

Review 4****

This is the first book in the Dark Angel Chronicles. I really enjoyed it.

Raea Dahlrich is a character I really liked. She is a seventeen year old with the usual angst issues. But, all is not what it seems and her life is about to change forever. I liked watching this character grow throughout the story. 

I downloaded this book a while ago, but never seemed to get time to read it. I found myself in between books and decided to give this story a try. I am glad I did, because it was a really fun story to read.

Raea is not the only great character in this story. I really liked Josh, Raea's best friend. He is a wonderful guy, if a bit obsessive about finding the "Dark Angel" who had been spotted helping people in the town. His enthusiasm made me smile. Then there is the mysterious Elis, who lives next door to Raea. He is full of secrets, but as the story progressed I found myself liking him a lot. I didn't really warm up to Pallin, the new student in Raea's class. And with good reason, as it turns out.

This story is very similar to some of the other YA romance books I have read over the years. However, this book has a unique twist. This twist gave the story a freshness that was surprising to say the least. The author has taken the concept of aliens, known as Inari (or Angels to us humans) using Earth as a sanctuary in a galactic war. This war has raged for millennia over the Starfire Crystal, a powerful collective of entities. Raea is thrown into this war and finds herself pitted against the Shirukan, who are after her piece of the crystal. There is plenty of danger and adventure in this tale, but not all of it from the Shirukan; there is also a nosy reporter digging around. The story is action packed and fast paced. I was sad to reach the end of the story, and I am now looking forward to reading the next book in the series.

Melanie Nilles has written a wonderful young adult paranormal romance. I loved her fast paced writing style, but some of the scenes didn't seem to flow as smoothly as they could have. Nevertheless, her book was an enjoyable read.

I highly recommend this book to teens aged 15+ and to adults who love reading the YA Romance genre. - Lynn Worton