Rating: 5 stars
Nowhere Book Bingo: An epistolary novel
CBR16 Sweet Books: Binge (I have already bought the next two books in the series in paperback, so I can read all of them as soon as possible.)
Official book description:
Kady thought breaking up with Ezra was the worst thing she'd ever been through. That was before her planet was invaded. Now, with enemy fire raining down on them, Kady and Ezra are forced to fight their way onto one of the evacuating craft, with an enemy warship in hot pursuit.
But the warship could be the least of their problems. A deadly plague has broken out and is mutating, with terrifying results; the fleet's AI, which should be protecting them, may actually be their biggest threat; and nobody in charge will say what's really going on. As Kady plunges into a web of data hacking to get to the truth, it's clear only one person can help her bring it all to light: Ezra.
Kady is a talented hacker and is fully aware that the evacuated passengers aren't being told much of anything. She is determined to find out the truth of what is going on, especially after the AI of the leading evacuation ship, AIDAN, blows one of the other two up unexpectedly. Naturally, the remaining ship's crew are rather nervous about the incident being repeated and the AI needs to be shut down until they can figure out why it acted so erratically. Ezra is recruited as a fighter pilot, working to defend the evacuation fleet, not exactly a job without significant risks.
As Kady becomes more and more isolated, and the losses really start affecting her, her illegal communication with Ezra becomes one of the things that keep her going. Neither of them has anyone else significant left in their lives, and it becomes clear that the reasons why Kady dumped Ezra in the first place become very insignificant in the grand scheme of things, and now they would just like to be reunited, before they quite possibly die.
As the back of the book says, the novel is "Told through a fascinating dossier of hacked documents—including emails, schematics, military files, IMs, medical reports, interviews, and more". I am very glad I got the paperback from the library, I'm genuinely not sure how in the world this book would work in audio, and I don't think I would have found it as engrossing a read on an e-reader screen. There were sections where I literally had to keep turning the book sideways or on its head to be able to read everything. It's a very interesting take on the epistolary format.
I can absolutely see why this book wouldn't be a 5-star read for some people. It was a bit slow to catch my interest in the beginning, but since it's not divided into chapters like a traditional book, but interview transcripts, memos, chat logs, and the like, it's very easy to get tempted to read just a little bit more, since each individual section is so short. Once things really started escalating, I had trouble putting the book down. I stayed up until far too late o'clock on a work night just to finish it (and had to actually peek at the ending about halfway through the book because all the tension was going to kill me if I didn't know how it all turned out). So to me, this was a five-star read, even though some of the characterisation probably could have been deeper, and parts of the book were pure horror, and really upsettingly graphic when it came to the violence perpetrated by those afflicted with the virus.
I have now bought this book for my keeper shelf, along with the two sequels, if they're even half as gripping as this one, I want physical copies of them for my very own. Also, having read the first one in a physical format, I'm not even sure it would be possible to get all the necessary information if you read them as an e-book or listened to it in audio.
Judging a book by its cover: The reds and oranges are very eye-catching and I'm not entirely sure what the cover is supposed to show, but I think it might be a firestorm, suggesting either the original attack on Kady and Ezra's home world or the subsequent explosion of one of the evacuation ships.
Crossposted on Cannonball Read
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