DNF ARC Review: Take Back The Skies by Lucy Saxon

Catherine Hunter is the daughter of a senior government official on the island of Anglya. She' s one of the privileged – she has luxurious clothes, plenty to eat, and is protected from the Collections which have ravaged families throughout the land. But Catherine longs to escape the confines of her life, before her dad can marry her off to a government brat and trap her forever.

So Catherine becomes Cat, pretends to be a kid escaping the Collections, and stows away on the skyship Stormdancer. As they leave Anglya behind and brave the storms that fill the skies around the islands of Tellus, Cat' s world becomes more turbulent than she could ever have imagined, and dangerous secrets unravel her old life once and for all . . .

I can only take boredom in small doses. Especially when it comes to reading a book.

I think this is technically my first DNF review. I take pride in finishing even the worst of books and let me state that this book WAS NOT the worst of books. It wasn’t all that bad really, I just COULD NOT get into the story or characters- no matter how many times I put it down and tried to come back to it. I only made it sixty-five percent before finally deciding to move on.

Sometimes it all comes down to timing and mood. Despite the female protagonist turning fifteen half way through the story and the lead male protagonist being seventeen, TBTS felt thoroughly mid-grade to me. The main character’s were very child-like and somewhat two-dimensional.

Because I had to put the book down for periods of time to see if my experience would change when coming back to it, I found that I was not able to develop a clear mental picture of the story world and I had no emotional investment or interest with the characters.

The pacing was slow without any burn even though the stakes were high enough in several situations to make any 12 year-old girl sweat. I’m not really sure if the time period of this book was supposed to be in the future or a re-imagined historical era. I felt like there were steam punk elements mixed with futuristic, Ender’s Game-like elements.

Take Back The Skies was almost like reading Etiquette and Espionage for me, although I enjoyed E&E much better because of an array of very interesting and whimsical characters. Etiquette and Espionage was a great book, I just think I would have enjoyed it more if I had been in junior-high. The same thing goes for TBTS. I just didn’t have the patience to push through this one.

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Regina

Classical music nerd by day, freelance writer and blogger by night. When I review books, I don't dish out and rehash every character and detail. What's the point of reading a book if you give most of the deets away in a review??? My reviews are more about my impressions and over all experience with the book. I am also a world-renowned armchair psychologist, and love to psychoanalyze authors.

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