A follow-up suffering from the possibility of fading into invisibility….
Genre: Y/A, Science Fiction
No. of pages: 255
From Goodreads:
It has been three months since Leona Hewitt dumped the body of her crush’s younger sister in the woods, praying he would never find out who did it. It has been three hours since she led him back to her rotting corpse.
And three minutes since she showed up in Leona’s bedroom, alive.
The culprit is a living substance secreted by a meteorite that can make people invisible . . . and apparently bring them back from the dead too. But something is terribly wrong with the girl claiming to be Ashley Lacroix. She doesn’t sleep. Sometimes, when she thinks no one is listening, she talks to someone who isn’t there. She says her soul has been eaten. She says Leona must die.
Now, evading an unseen enemy, Leona must dig up the startling truth behind Ashley’s death before an insidious creature claims its next victim. Only the truth may be more chilling than she ever could have imagined. And the next victim may be herself.
I still enjoyed all the elements in ‘Of Starlight’ that I had from the debut of the series, ‘Translucent,’ but there was a whole arena of problems that affected ‘Of Starlight’ which had me shaking my head. Still, a fun science fiction romp with lots of potential.
Some aspects of story that were introduced did not make sense and did not flow. I felt like this instalment was missing the touch of a content editor. There were so many illogical happenings I was practically growling with frustration. Simple obvious solutions to many situations our protagonist and her best friend, Leona and Megan faced were overlooked.
Additionally, Leona and Megan felt immature. I wanted the experience to age them, they were after all, dealing with life and death situations, so some seriousness was called for. Though I did like the moments of comedy dispersed throughout – like their puns and a few slapstick moments – it broke the tension when it was needed. I would have loved to have like to gotten more of this, in context.
The relationship between Leona and Emory did not feel real, unlike the previous book, Leona’s behaviour fell into insta-love or stalkery territory. It was making me cringe a little.
Dan Rix did a great job in creating tension and his action scenes are fantastic to read, I just wish the story wasn’t so disjointed and the plot better thought-out. This read like a first draft. There were so many storytelling devices that could have been improved.
I’m also at a loss at what this book was supposed to achieve – it didn’t drive the plot forward too much and I got a sense we were treading water until some really good stuff is going to happen (we can only hope) in books 3 & 4.
The potential for this to be an outstanding book was there, it just fell so, so short of the mark. We need an intelligent read and challenging plot lines in science fiction, otherwise it reads like really bad fan fiction.
I’m hoping this trend doesn’t continue in the following books, ‘Ash and Darkness’ and ‘Slaying Shadows’ because Leona is a bold, sassy and intelligent heroine; and the set up of her and Emory’s relationship lends itself to some great tension and possibility of a redemption story.
Stay tuned to see whether I feel if this series delivers on all my hopes.
Overall feeling: What the hell happened?
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Casey Carlisle 