Revenger ★★☆☆ ½

~ Bookstooge

revenger (Custom)

This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress, Blogspot, Librarything & Tumblr by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission
Title: Revenger
Series: ——
Author: Alistair Reynolds
Rating: 2.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: YA-SF
Pages: 411
Format: Digital Edition

 

 

Synopsis:

Adrana and Fura Ness run away from home and join the crew of a spaceship that looks for treasures from older civilizations. They are “Bone Readers”, which allows them to communicate with other Bone Readers on other ships. They’re first mission sees them attacked by the Dread Pirate Bosa Sennen (make sure you said that part like Andre the Giant does in The Princess Bride) and Adrana is captured, Ness hides in the walls of the ship and one other of the crew, Porzor, survives. Fura and Porzor are rescued and Fura, who is under age, is taken back to her ailing father.

Back home Fura is given drugs to keep her docile and fed the story that her sister is dead, not alive and captured. Fura resists, hooks back up with Porzor on another ships and plans how to rescue Adrana and get her revenge on Bosa Sennen.

*Spoiler*

Fura tricks the crew to get some special armor, makes them a target for Bosa Sennen, kills all the crew on Bosa Sennen’s ship and takes it over. She rescues her sister Adrana, who now believes in the cause that Bosa Sennen was fighting for, and Fura pretty much becomes Bosa Sennen in all but name.

/End Spoiler of Everything

 

My Thoughts:

This was not my first book by Reynolds and for that I am intensely grateful. I read Beyond the Aquila Rift just last year in fact. What a great book. So I KNOW at what level Reynolds can write.

Unfortunately, this was deliberately written to be sold in the YA genre and it shows. I’d actually recommend this to a 12-14 year old and once they’d gotten used to Reynold’s name, introduce them to his other stuff when they hit the mid to late teens.

My biggest issue. The slang words used. I am going to just list the ones that I can remember:

  1. Glowy
  2. the grey
  3. the squawky
  4. the Swirly
  5. gubbins
  6. the viewy
  7. lungstuff

There were more,but those stuck out the most. A mature society doesn’t talk like that. A closed, insular society would but that disappears when homogenization takes place. Only teens talk like that, making ordinary things just a little bit different to make it their own. Needless to say, every time I read the word “lungstuff” I was completely thrown out of the book.

My other issue is Fura Ness. She goes from being a naive, tender young thing to a complete bad ass who glows and has a metal hand but she can’t think for crap. She has no plan, she has no tactical training, no fighting training, nothing in fact but the Righteous Anger of her Cause. She is presented as someone as tough as Bosa Sennen by the end of the book, but there is nothing to back that up. Being hard emotionally and having some real anger issues aren’t going to actually do you squat when facing trained professionals. But this being a YA book, it IS enough.

For a review by someone who has read more Reynolds than me [admittedly, not a hard goal to reach], please check out Manuel’s review of Revenger.

Now that I have read this, I’m spurred on to track down Reynolds’ other books so at least this book has that one good point.

★★☆☆ ½

 

bookstooge

 

23 thoughts on “Revenger ★★☆☆ ½”

  3. Pingback: September ’17 Roundup & Ramblings | Bookstooge's Reviews on the Road

  5. I gave up on Reynolds. Read about ten his titles, basically he just wrote 3 excellent books, his RS trilogy, and then turned to professional writing on a much too high pace. House Of Suns was a surprising return to form.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  6. This one didn’t work for me either, I gave it 2 stars as I recall. Plus it was doubly disappointing because it was my first Reynolds and I’d expected so much more. To be fair though, I was warned beforehand that it was quite different from his usual fare, and I probably should have started with his more popular series.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  7. Congratulations on managing to finish it – I couldn’t. To me this was NOT Reynolds, but some evil twin from the Mirror Universe who took his place for the time necessary to write this book. And he probably wore a goatee, as well… 😀
    That said, I agree on your comments about the character’s voice, and especially on the slang, that became very irritating, very soon.
    If you want to read some quality Reynolds, I can second Bormgans’ recommendations and add Chasm City to the list.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  8. I hate picking up a fantasy/sci-fi novel only to find out afterwards that it actually has a hidden YA tag on it that no one bothered to mention anywhere. It’s good to know that the author has great books though. I actually have Revelation Space on my TBR. Great review.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  9. I’ve only read one of his works: Slow Bullets. I know Maddalena liked it, but there was so much irrational behavior by the characters that I felt like I was reading a spoof. It’s on my backlog of stories to review on the blog, once I finally finish my magazine quest.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s