Book Review – ‘Salvation’ (#3 Sanctuary) by Caryn Lix

Another twist in the saga as a bunch of powered teens battle hungry aliens…

Genre: YA, Science Fiction

No. of pages: 432

Fall down seven times, get up eight.

These are the words Kenzie has always lived by. The problem is, she’s fallen down too many times to count.

Kenzie and her friends have already escaped two vicious alien attacks—not to mention the corporate bounty hunters sent to capture them. They’re haunted by the friends they’ve lost and the hard choices they’ve had to make in this war they never asked for.

And now, thanks to superpowers she received from the very aliens she’s fighting, Kenzie has stranded everyone on a strange planet with no way off. She just wanted a safe place from the monstrous creatures terrorizing her world, but this new planet has dangers of its own, and Kenzie will have to uncover its secrets if she has any hope of ever making it home again.

Sacrifice is nothing new for Kenzie. She’ll do anything—anything—to destroy the aliens that killed both of her parents. But how can Kenzie save Earth if she can’t even save the people she loves?

‘Salvation’ is a wonderful and unexpected twist on the Sanctuary trilogy. This concluding novel really captured my imagination but managed to stay grounded in reality as protagonists have to face consequences of their actions.

We see more loss in ‘Salvation’ and I’m on the fence over how this is dealt with… but I guess for a YA novel, and needing to move the plot forward, the author did justice for the characters and story, despite the gruelling situations.

I don’t feel like we got much more character development in ‘Salvation’ – the characters have already been put through the ringer. Here, it is more about strengthening their resolve in the face of desperation and insurmountable odds.

I also feel, for the first time, the aliens were finally grounded in the narrative, their backstory is revealed and no longer felt like a two-dimensional, single-minded antagonist.

There is still a juvenile tone to the narrative – as that is the target market for this novel, but I would have liked a more mature and calculated tone to elevate the story and characters. I don’t think it would have isolated the target market, making them feel like intelligent readers.

The pacing is fairly steady and really ramps up in the last quarter of the novel, and had me eagerly flipping through the pages. Though in having said that, I did feel there was a long build up to the conclusion. This is only because we had to go through a whole lot of world building of yet another new environment we find our protagonists in. But it was a fun mystery to unravel… I certainly did not guess it.

In the beginning novels we see a lot of squabbling between the protagonists, but in ‘Salvation’ it is less so because they are a lone group of survivors, reliant on each other to get out of their situation alive. And while Lix does a great job at keeping the clashing personalities strong in the narrative, I felt a need for the characters to have different motivations to create tension, rather than grating personalities. But Lix has done a stellar job in crafting distinct characters that you love to hate, and love to love.

It was a great conclusion to the series, but I was left wanting a little more of resonance on that final paragraph to get a hint at the protagonists’ future… just a minor tweak to really fuel my imagination.

Certainly a great number of surprises and reveals that delighted me. I think it was more tone that stopped me from truly being immersed in the narrative.

‘Salvation’ has definitely returned to the standard and promise of ‘Sanctuary,’ where ‘Containment’ suffered a little of that middle-book-syndrome. However, a strong finish.

Overall feeling: Surprising sci-fi!

© Casey Carlisle 2021. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Casey Carlisle with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Book Review – ‘Containment’ (#2 Sanctuary) by Caryn Lix

A middle book slump for me…

Genre: Y/A, Science Fiction

No. of pages: 496

They may have escaped Sanctuary, but Kenzie and her friends are far from safe.

Ex-Omnistellar prison guard Kenzie and her superpowered friends barely made it off Sanctuary alive. Now they’re stuck in a stolen alien ship with nowhere to go and no one to help them. Kenzie is desperate for a plan, but she doesn’t know who to trust anymore. Everyone has their own dark secrets: Omnistellar, her parents, even Cage. Worse still, she’s haunted by memories of the aliens who nearly tore her to shreds—and forced her to accidentally kill one of the Sanctuary prisoners, Matt.

When Kenzie intercepts a radio communication suggesting that more aliens are on their way, she knows there’s only one choice: They must turn themselves in to Omnistellar and destroy the ship before the aliens follow the signal straight to them. Because if the monstrous creatures who attacked Sanctuary reach Earth, then it’s game over for humanity.

What Kenzie doesn’t know is that the aliens aren’t the only ones on the hunt. Omnistellar has put a bounty on Kenzie’s head—and the question is whether the aliens or Omnistellar get to her first.

I was so eager to continue with the story of Kenzie and the gang, their fight for survival against greedy corporation Omnistellar, and an alien threat. ‘Containment’ brought all of that in spectacular fashion, but there were a few issues I had that which disappointed me. This novel was laboriously slow. Where was that pacing from ‘Sanctuary?’ We got a few great action scenes, but the rest of ‘Containment’ was bogged down in detail, internal lamenting, and repetition. The continual reiteration of the facts became boring, so too did the repeated use of certain descriptors… I feel like Caryn Lix’s editing team really let her down on this one. I even found a few grammatical errors. With 496 pages, this is a long YA, and it was made worse with the slow pace and juvenile attitudes popping up every now and then from the cast. I felt like a 2 year old kept saying ‘mine.’ The power struggles between the characters could have been dealt with in a better fashion so they weren’t so aggressive and immature to give the narrative a better flow.

There was also too much repetition from the plot of ‘Sanctuary.’ I know it was to give a symbolic twist to the story – a chance to change an outcome, but it read a lazy and trite. While I love the science fiction of it all, the scary aliens, the strange abilities the teens have, and Lix’s ability to write great action scenes, the soul of this story wanned in comparison to the debut. ‘Containment’ has really suffered from the middle book slump. Let’s hope it’s a slump and not a trend for a downward spiral.

Ultimately, ‘Containment’ wasn’t a terrible experience, it just felt really long. And I wanted something more original to happen within the plot – and I don’t know, the characters to grow up a bit after the experiences they have survived.

I love the action far more than the melodrama and the characters. The cast really shines under pressure and have to fight for survival, but when they are relating to each other, they revert into sullen teens that have me grating my teeth. So I fip-flopped from finding Kenzie and the gang from being annoying to heroic. I hope Caryn Lix can find a balance.

The theme of family (that is of their constructed family) was a pleasure to read. Plus, I definitely felt the scare and anxiety of the hull-shredding aliens in the story. These great points along with some intriguing concepts introduced in ‘Containment’ have me really keen to see where they go in the next sequel ‘Salvation.’

It felt very predictable. I only got one surprise from a plot twist at the end, but for the most part this felt like a mediocre read, and I am on the fence about recommending this one… I’d have to wait until reading ‘Salvation’ before doing so, because if it is just a middle book slump, then, I can get over it. We’ll just have to wait and see.

Overall feeling: I just wish it was better…

© Casey Carlisle 2020. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Casey Carlisle with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Book Review – ‘Sanctuary’ (#1 Sanctuary) by Caryn Lix

A slow start for Sanctuary.

Genre: Y/A, Science Fiction

No. of pages: 480

From Goodreads:

Kenzie holds one truth above all: the company is everything.

As a citizen of Omnistellar Concepts, the most powerful corporation in the solar system, Kenzie has trained her entire life for one goal: to become an elite guard on Sanctuary, Omnistellar’s space prison for superpowered teens too dangerous for Earth. As a junior guard, she’s excited to prove herself to her company—and that means sacrificing anything that won’t propel her forward.

But then a routine drill goes sideways and Kenzie is taken hostage by rioting prisoners.

At first, she’s confident her commanding officer—who also happens to be her mother—will stop at nothing to secure her freedom. Yet it soon becomes clear that her mother is more concerned with sticking to Omnistellar protocol than she is with getting Kenzie out safely.

As Kenzie forms her own plan to escape, she doesn’t realize there’s a more sinister threat looming, something ancient and evil that has clawed its way into Sanctuary from the vacuum of space. And Kenzie might have to team up with her captors to survive—all while beginning to suspect there’s a darker side to the Omnistellar she knows.

I was very excited for this novel – a space prison jail break mixed up in an alien invasion – all the hallmarks for a riot of a sci-fi read. Count me in.

However, the first half of the book was laboriously slow. I took me over a week just to reach the midway point, continuously putting ‘Sanctuary‘ down for a rest because I wasn’t compelled to read on. The subject matter was fine, it was the pacing. And a bit too much information off topic. I feel you could have edited out 100-150 pages from this first part and not lost a thing. It would have turned ‘Sanctuary‘ into a cracker of a read.

Comparatively, I completed the second half of this novel in an afternoon. The pacing and action were top notch, plenty going on to drive the plot forward, turning points for the characters… there was not much I could fault.

Our protagonist Kenzie didn’t seem all that interesting at the start, but certainly developed into a character I began to care about. She starts out very rule-following and vanilla; and I didn’t really get a strong sense of emotion and connection to other cast members of the novel. Even the growing romantic interest in prisoner Cage – motivations and situations felt tenuous at best. Not so realistic or justifiable. I’m wondering if it simply boiled down to the fact of the horrible pacing in the first half. A more compact, punchier introduction to the world of ‘Sanctuary‘ and getting to know the players in the field may have created the tension needed to create a strong bond?

The plot and storytelling of ‘Sanctuary‘ was highly entertaining. I was gripped in action scenes, got all the feels from the right places, and even surprised at several plot twists. There was an element of predictability, but not enough to render this read unsurprising or boring. Pacing issues aside, I have to commend Caryn Lix for her debut. I am definitely engrossed enough to be picking up the next novel in this collection ‘Containment.’ Given that the world building is established, characters fleshed out, the sequel should have better pacing, and Caryn Lix’s writing experience improved from publishing ‘Sanctuary.’

I’m on the fence about recommending this one – it took a while for me to get into, and lovers of sci-fi may get bored quickly. But for YA readers who like a touch of science fiction, this may be thoroughly entertaining… so I’m torn. This was a slightly better than average read for me, so maybe it’s worth a shot?

Overall feeling: so-so

© Casey Carlisle 2019. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Casey Carlisle with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.