Uptown Oracle Reads… Honor Among Thieves

Petty criminal Zara Cole has a painful past that’s made her stronger than most, which is why she chose life in New Detroit instead moving with her family to Mars. In her eyes, living inside a dome isn’t much better than a prison cell. Still, when Zara commits a crime that has her running scared, jail might be exactly where she’s headed. Instead Zara is recruited into the Honors, an elite team of humans selected by the Leviathan—a race of sentient alien ships—to explore the outer reaches of the universe as their passengers. Zara seizes the chance to flee Earth’s dangers, but when she meets Nadim, the alien ship she’s assigned, Zara starts to feel at home for the first time. But nothing could have prepared her for the dark, ominous truths that lurk behind the alluring glitter of starlight.

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Honor Among Thieves
Rachel Caine & Ann Aguirre

This was a great re-introduction to Rachel Caine as I read the Morganville series when I was younger. Honor of Thieves has a really interesting and unique premise of there being living and sentient beings that can be used as spaceships. The world building was fantastic, we find out all about how Earth is looking in the future, there’s also a dome on Mars. My favourite part was when we went to a different planet and the foliage and ruins were just beautifully described.

We get two point of views, one is Zara, our main character and the other is Nadim, the Leviathan. We also get some reports and flashback style parts in between these POV’s which I personally didn’t like. They we scripts, or news articles and in my eArc copy, it didn’t work. But I am sure it will look a lot better on the actual books page, and would probably be easier to read.

Zara is you fairly typical tough girl main character, but where the characters really shine is when interacting with others. I loved the female frriendshi between Zara and Beatriz. They were two females stuck together on this ship and they really supported one another, and got everything they needed done. On the other hand, I disliked the relationship between Zara and Nadim. The way it was set up was that they have a bond, and this all felt very much like a romantic sub plot. This just felt really problematic for me because Nadim is the sole thing that is keeping Zara alive when in space. She’s completely dependent on him for every single human need, including water, food, and oxygen. There’s just a very unequal standing between them, and it felt really eerie when I was reading it.

Within the actual plot there are multiple ‘bad guys’ and you’re never quite sure what’s going to happen with them. This was really intriguing and was what kept me reading. Because the actually pacing wasn’t great. About 50% into the book, I still had no idea where we were heading. There wasn’t really a mission or objective for our characters, it was basically a tour of the galaxy kind of storyline. Which isn’t interesting unless something happens.  This book is clearly written as an introductory book to a series, it’s main focus is characters, world building and relationships. I think it has set up the series arc well, but it did fall a little bit flat on it’s own.

Overall I really enjoyed this sci-fi book and will happily be picking up the next book to see what happens.

POSITIVES

+ World building

+ Multiple villains

+ Female friendships

NEGATIVES

– Bond between Zara and Nadim

– An introductory book

I received Honor Among Thieves by Rachel Caine & Ann Aguirre from the publisher via Edelweiss. This is an unbiased and honest review