ARC received in exchange for an honest review - thank you! I didn't think, when I first started this book, it was going to be a 4.5 star read. The cover makes it look like a light YA sci-fi romance; instead, it's a delightfully dark, horror-filled space thriller. Requesting this from NetGalley is probably the best impulse decision I've made all year. PLOT In this futuristic world, humans have succeeded in growing living spaceships. Obedient and nurturing, Cyclo is one such spaceship; she's be ARC received in exchange for an honest review - thank you!
I didn't think, when I first started this book, it was going to be a 4.5 star read. The cover makes it look like a light YA sci-fi romance; instead, it's a delightfully dark, horror-filled space thriller. Requesting this from NetGalley is probably the best impulse decision I've made all year. PLOT
In this futuristic world, humans have succeeded in growing living spaceships. Obedient and nurturing, Cyclo is one such spaceship; she's been a second mother to Hana, the girl who shouldn't exist. Hana's mother grew her in a test tube and has reared her secretly on board the ship all this time. The day she's supposed to finally be introduced to the rest of the crew, Hana wakes up to find that they've all disappeared - she is the only one left, on board a Cyclo that's slowly dying. The flies are already settling onto the carcass in the form of a team from ReCOR, the spaceship company who grew Cyclo. Enter Fennac, Portia, Gammand and Miki. All convicted felons, they've agreed to carry out ReCOR's objectives on this death mission in return for money being provided to their chosen beneficiaries. They weren't expecting to find someone still left on board. And yet there she is: Hana, trapped and alone, meeting other human beings for the first time. And the last - when the ship dies, they all will too.Until the 40% mark, I'll be honest - the pace is a bit slow, and I thought more than once about DNFing. But then the book abruptly takes a nosedive straight into And Then There Were None territory. AND IT IS AWESOME. Crew member after crew member is being picked off - but by who? Or what? From here, it's a fast-paced, high-octane thriller that doesn't let up until right at the end. This book is properly scary; the implosion of Hana's entire world is truly terrifying. CHARACTERS
I was a bit dubious when I saw that it was dual first-person POV, but I needn't have worried - Kang handles it like a pro. Fennec and Hanna's styles of talking are very dissimilar. He, as befits his criminal status and greater life experience, is funny, cynical, and irreverent. In fact, he's not just funny: he's bloody hilarious. Hana is understandably more reserved and uncertain, particularly at first, but she has a core of fundamental strength that enables her to deal with the breakdown of her entire world without falling to pieces. The progression from 'girl completely dependent on Cyclo for everything' to 'independence' progresses at a believable speed. The romance between her and Fennec is rapid, but they do have like a week to live. So you can't really blame them. The other characters are also brilliantly fleshed out. No thin side characters here! Portia, Gammand and Miki all have their own motivations and backgrounds. Love them or hate them, you have to empathise with them: if they don't complete their objectives before they die, ReCOR won't pay their beneficiaries. It's easy to understand why they'd be willing to crush anything that gets in the way of them finishing their mission before Cyclo blows. Even if that thing might be Hana. I don't want to give too much away, but Cyclo is a character in her own right, and it's far too easy to empathise with her too.There might be murders, but there is - to a large extent - no villain here.Unsurprisingly, considering most of the crew is comprised of aliens, there is diversity galore. Hana was engineered to have Korean ancestry; Fennec tells us that he's a little bit Taiwanese, German, Spanish, Japanese, and Senegalese, last time I asked my parents. WRITING
No real complaints here. Kang's quick-fire style is well suited to keeping the tension ratcheted up; the flowery romance language was a bit harder to swallow, but oh well. Also, this book was unexpectedly profound. It mused on a wide range of topics - death, obviously, but also choice, and independence, and loneliness. But it was never preachy, which helped it pack an even bigger punch. If there's one YA book you're going to read this year, make it Toxic.[Blog] - [Bookstagram]
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