There was no way that I thought I'd have my first DNF within the first week of the year. I am so disappointed that I didn't enjoy reading this book. The series as a whole was one of my priority reads for this year, and I truly did think I'd like it based off of the synopsis.
The first DNF of the year goes to...
Victories Greater Than Death by Charlie Jane Anders
I ended up DNFing this at just about 100 pages. And the book is only 288 pages long. I really did try to force myself to go further, thinking it may get better, but after over 1/3 of the way through, I realized it was not going to.
First of all, I am a very character driven reader. One thing that drives me mad is when authors take one defining characteristic and make the entire character's personality based off of that. It gives them no dimension and makes them feel very unrealistic and inauthentic. And this doesn't apply to only the humans. Every character in this book was built on a singular characteristic and we don't really get to explore them as full people, or aliens. There were so many side characters introduced in the span of three pages, and then they were also not explored, so I have no clue why they were written to be there in the first place.
I really enjoy different author's takes on what alien life may be like. I've read some fantastic YA books that are extremely creative when it comes to what this looks like, but I was very disappointed in the alien depictions in this book. They were essentially strange looking humans. They followed human customs in speech, wore clothes that were very human, and for all intents and purposes, acted like humans. They even introduced themselves by human pronouns, which took me out of the story. Why would I expect aliens to be basically just like us? It felt uncreative and unoriginal. At least it was explained how Tina could understand alien speech, although that came far too late for me.
This also felt like it was more middle grade than YA. The characters acted extremely immaturely for 16+. They didn't speak like teens, nor act like teens. This definitely fit the "I'm-not-like-other-girls" feel. And I'm not talking about Tina who was a literal reincarnated alien. I'm talking about her friend Rachel. She basically said multiple times "I'm so weird, I'm so quirky, I have hobbies that girls don't have". It drove me crazy. And yes, I get this is a YA book so that trope is very common, but that doesn't mean I have to enjoy reading it. I want characters that aren't just caricatures of others that I've read.
Lastly, the structural way it was written also bothered me. There was so much action and it was like "bam! bam! bam!". Nothing was super well explained and it was easy to get lost since it felt jumbled. I just stopped reading once I realized I didn't actually care where the story was going or what was happening to the characters since no side character was given more than a few sentences once they were introduced. I have heard that this is a poor representation of the author's writing though, so perhaps I'll give her another chance.
Needless to say, but I will not be continuing with the Unstoppable series.
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