Review: Zenith

Zenith by Sasha Alsberg
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Ehh...I was still a little hyped up for this one even when the GR rating for it totally tanked. At first, I thought it was just a bit of a bad reaction to a Booktuber getting what appeared to be an easy road to publication, or some kind of misguided punishment aimed at Harlequin Teen because other problematic books. Either way, not really justified, right?

Well, I still think judging the book as harshly as it got judged before its official publication for tangential reasons was unfair.

But the book itself?

Definitely not at all worth the hype or anti-hype. Not when it tries a little too hard to emulate Sarah J. Maas' style - particularly the Throne of Glass style, with short chapters shuffling between multiple POVs and an occasional funny line or memorable reference to some past hookup on some various characters' parts. (Humorously, while this book's about as far removed from Throne of Glass in style as you can get, its main setting is a Spaceship of Glass.) It also suffers from another one of SJM's biggest flaws - a big world map, far bigger than can be explored even in these 500 pages, and no doubt bigger than can be explored in the whole damn series. A trait shared not only with SJM, but with another recent and disappointing space-opera YA, Carve the Mark. Worst of all, despite the high promise, the story utterly failed to hook me like it should have, between the constant time jumps and POV shifts - and when I went ahead and skipped to the end just to see how it ended, it looked to me like it was copying a few of SJM's Mary Sue style moves too. I could be wrong, though.

Either way, I'm pretty sure I'm not gonna try this book again, or continue the rest of the series. Sorry, Cummings and Alsberg.

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