Thank you NewSouth Publishing for this book in exchange for an honest review

Synopsis:

Tina never worries about being ‘ordinary’—she doesn’t have to, since she’s known practically forever that she’s not just Tina Mains, average teenager and beloved daughter. She’s also the keeper of an interplanetary rescue beacon, and one day soon, it’s going to activate, and then her dreams of saving all the worlds and adventuring among the stars will finally be possible. Tina’s legacy, after all, is intergalactic—she is the hidden clone of a famed alien hero, left on Earth disguised as a human to give the universe another chance to defeat a terrible evil.

But when the beacon activates, it turns out that Tina’s destiny isn’t quite what she expected. Things are far more dangerous than she ever assumed. Luckily, Tina is surrounded by a crew she can trust, and her best friend Rachael, and she is still determined to save all the worlds. But first she’ll have to save herself.

Review:

I was hyped like hell for Victories Greater Than Death. Space? Aliens? Fricken epic cover? Seriously, I was excited for this but I might have overhyped myself for this book… That, or the book really let me down.

The book is centred around Tine, who is a human clone of a once reparable alien commander with a faint memory of her former being. Tina must team up to save the world and yadda yadda, you get the idea because I’m not overly sold on the plot. I mean it was there, it showed up and waved at me but that’s about as far as it went. Basically, it felt like you boarded the bus prepared to go on this epic plot journey only to find that the bus has no wheels, and you end up heading nowhere and the plot has no explanation or no back up plan.

That being said, there was a great deal of action that made the book enjoyable though there were parts of the book that were described better than others. Don’t get me wrong I have a very vivid imagination, so the fact there were a few pages I had to reread to make sure I wasn’t missing out on description, characteristics and defining features was oddly concerning. I’m all for alien races and spaceships but I need some sort of guideline of what they look like?? Which leads into the double end of the sword right here… the book contains pronoun introductions for characters, which is great, I’m there for that, I’ll get my cheerleading costume to cheer and shout from the sideline! The concern I have is that I’m getting pronouns on character introductions but there are no detail character descriptions. There is more conversation around pronouns rather then the slight detail on what they hell they look like. Don’t I deserve both? Can I have both? The pronoun and the description?

That being said, I liked it! The characters were entertaining, even if I don’t really know what they looked like. I love the story and I love the sci-fi terminology broken down, so I didn’t need to read the dictionary at the same time. Also, it has been a while since I didn’t predict the ending, that ending had me shook!

Rating: 3.5

Publisher: Titan Books

ISBN: 9781789094725