Uptown Oracle Reads…. Zenith

Androma Racella, the Bloody Baroness, is a powerful mercenary whose reign of terror stretches across the Mirabel Galaxy. But when a routine mission goes awry, the Marauder‘s all-girl crew is tested as they find themselves in a treacherous situation and at the mercy of a sadistic bounty hunter from Andi’s past. Meanwhile, a ruthless ruler waits in the shadows, biding her time to exact revenge for the destruction of her people. The pieces of her deadly plan are about to fall into place, unleashing a plot that will tear Mirabel in two. Andi and her crew embark on a journey that could restore order to their ship or start a war that will devour worlds. As the Marauder hurtles toward the unknown, and Mirabel hangs in the balance, the only certainty is that in a galaxy run on lies and illusion, no one can be trusted.

It’s been about two weeks since I finished Zenith and I think I’ve finally figured out what bothered me most. I know this book is meant to be a duology and the story is going to continue but I felt like this first book was missing the big action moment. There’s always an epic showdown right before the end of a book. Something the book had been leading up to from the start. But Zenith didn’t have that. There were definitely action moments and there was a constant pacing, but nothing exquisite or exciting enough. It felt extremely anticlimactic when I finished. I understand wanting to write more than one book in a series, but my thinking at this moment in time is that this should not have been a duology.

The characters weren’t great. Adroma is the ‘Bloody Baroness’ but I really don’t think she’s written to be anything close to this nickname. Obviously we’re told that she’s a fluffy little marshmallow on the inside, but even her actions throughout the book don’t lend her to this moniker. One of the crew members literally doesn’t have a backstory because she’s lost her memory. The other two I’m not fully sure on, but I know one is a child and the other is some scaled alien chick. Overall I wasn’t connected to any of the crew or the other POV characters which we barely get to know anyway. This just hampered my reading experience further.e

We do get to see a lot of different planets, although sometimes this is in flashbacks. These are all basically described by looks. Although Androma and crew rarely leave the spaceship long enough to really get to explore these new worlds in a way I would want from a sci-fi book. The aliens also all seem to be humanoid in nature. Lira the resident alien is a human with blue skin and scales. I want proper aliens like what you see in Guardians of the Galaxy and Star Wars.

Overall, I don’t think this book was the greatest, although it did have some good points and it is readable. I think a lot could have been done to make it better especially since they brought out a novella version of it last year and got feedback. This may also have been fixed with a better editor as with two writers you would also get two very different writing styles.

Positives

+ Good pacing

Negatives

– Anticlimactic

– Lack of character depth

I received Zenith* by Lindsay Cummings and Sasha Alsberg from the publisher via NetGalley. This is an unbiased and honest review.