Zenith

Androma Racella is also known as The Bloody Baroness, a ruthless mercenary who travels with her crew of trusted friends. They are the best in the business until Dex, a jilted lover of Androma’s catches and imprisons them. This is as far as I got in the book.

A book about space pirates sounds cool, but this one was not. I gave up at the 50 page mark because of many issues. First, Androma is a mercenary, but she committed a senseless murder revealed early on. How is she not a terrible person? Why should I care about her at all? The woman’s only crime was being a powerful man’s mistress, which left a bad taste in my mouth. She had no problem killing a woman presumably because the man in question much more powerful or important. The whole situation is troubling and gross. If your main character is a straight out murderer, they have to be justified or like able in some way. Androma isn’t.

Second, her crew members’ entire back story is described with almost no indication of them or their relationship to Androma. They are supposed to be the best of friends, but they acted like acquaintances at best. The crew is suppose to be the very best at what they do, but that isn’t shown either since they are caught so early in the book. Third, the love interest seems like a total tool and of course he’s the only one who could beat Androma at her own game. They have a predictably messy past. All the characters are paper thin and I didn’t care about them at all.

The writing irked me. All of the descriptions are flowery yet stilted. I love lyrical and poetic  language, but this was not well done. Reading this right after reading a Seanan McGuire book was a mistake since the writing seemed even more amateurish and awkward in comparison. Everything was told to the reader with nothing in the actions of the characters or the plot to support any of it. I struggled to get to page 50 and put it down when I didn’t care at all for the characters, the world, or the story and there were over 400 pages left. I suppose it could have gotten better from there, but it just wasn’t for me.

My rating: 1/5 fishmuffins