Zach's YA Reviews

Review:

Protagonist: Eureka is a fairly difficult protagonist to deal with. There were many times during the story where her actions seemed out of place or confusing. As for her character in general, I thought she was okay, but kind of bland. When I usually read a book the protagonist always has something that sets them apart and makes them special, and I'm not talking about any special abilities or anything like that, but more there's a quality that reaches out and grabs my attention, however Eureka lacked this and just came off very boring to me despite her romantic and world-threatening drama.

Romance: ***Note this section contains mild spoilers*** This... this is what aggravated me most about this book. The author attempts a love triangle but the execution is just... terrible. First off in the prologue we are introduced to the primary love interest, and he's kind creepy to me, while this creepiness is explained away it still lingers throughout the book and begins to grow again later on in the story, worse yet Eureka has a "strange attraction toward him" which is also, albeit hastily, at best, explained. Then we have the secondary love interest who seemed really cool and I actually really liked him as a love interest... at first. Soon he becomes pretty much a complete asshole and it felt to me as the author was just trying to get the "primary" love interest to seem better in comparison, which I have my doubts about now, but it only left me only hoping that they'd both leave Eureka alone. While in the end there's a bit of hope for one of these characters, this romance needs to be fixed quickly.

World-Building: This is the only thing that kept me reading at times. I liked how the author created and expanded on the myth of Atlantis, however we are told terms in the prologue that aren't explained until most of the way through this book, which is pretty much the only thing that I didn't like about the world-building. We aren't really given much on the actual mythology until nearly halfway through but the story up until then is entertaining, albeit a bit annoying. I felt there should have been a bit more expansion on the mythology, even for the first book it's a bit lacking however I'm hoping for a lot more information in the next installment.

Predictability: The predictability of this book was a bit flip-floppy, there were moments when I thought that I knew exactly what was going to happen and I was right, but then there were other moments I couldn't even begin to conceive what was happening it came so out of the blue. I really cannot explain how this effected me as I read, I was never bored with the things I predicted, but I was never totally blown away but the things I could not foresee, so it was a bit neutral for me, but didn't detract from the book.

Ending: The ending was something that I really liked, and no not because it ended, but rather that the epilogue gave me a bit more hope and redeemed a certain character for me. As I was reading this book one line was constantly repeated "Everything might change with the last word" which gave me hope that story would get better by the end, and it did a bit, giving me just enough hope that if I continue this series it will get better.

Rating:

This will probably be disappointing to a lot of you out there that cannot wait for this book to come out and I wish I could have given it a better rating but it just wasn't nearly as good as I thought it would be and the love triangle, and how it was handled, angered me to no end. That being said, Will I buy a finished copy of this book? Yes. Will I rush out to buy it? No. Will I read the sequel? Of course. Am I chomping at the bit for it to come out? Eh. kinda but not really. Make of that what you will.