Friday, April 12, 2019

Book Review: "Invictus" by Ryan Graudin

Title: Invictus
Author: Ryan Graudin
Genre: YA Science Fiction
Page Length: 458 pages
Publication Date: September 26, 2017
Date Started: April 3, 2019
Date Finished: April 8, 2019
Rating: 3.5 // 5 stars

I was so excited for this book. I'd somehow secured a trade for an arc almost two years ago and have been excited to read this ever since. Unfortunately, I was a little disappointed but I'm attributing some of that to the fact I was literally hyping it up in my mind for almost two years. Overall, I did enjoy this book and thought the characters and plot was enjoyable, but I thought there was a lot of missed opportunity.

Looking back on reading this, I feel as if I can count the major plot points on a single hand, which is rough because this book is over 400 pages long. I honestly don't feel like there was much actually going on. Also, for a time-traveling crew of space pirates, there's not very much time-traveling or pirating. Yes, there's a few different time periods we get to see, but I expected so much more time-travel for a 400-page book. Still, what we did get was interesting and I wish we'd gotten to see even more of how time-travel technically works. It seems to me that whenever they time-traveled, the scene would go something like, "character typed in a few numbers, we waited, and then we were there." I just feel as if there were a lot of missed opportunities for more time-travel, more new exciting places, more everything. But, instead, a lot of times I found myself bored or wishing their was something actually going on rather than the characters just sitting around a room talking because that doesn't work for me unless I'm highly invested in them. 

In terms of the characters, I did really enjoy them even if I didn't connect a whole lot. I definitely found Far to be my favorite, but the others on the crew were also very enjoyable to read from. There were only two main points of view, but at some point or another a lot of characters got a chapter or two where we ended up with about seven total points of view, which is a bit much and could be a potential reason I didn't connect as much. I feel as if the multiple points of view let me connect a little bit with every character but not beyond that. But the main thing is that I did connect with every character and I liked most characters, I just didn't love them. 

The relationships between the characters were another thing that made me like this book a lot more. I was indeed shipping characters with each other and I did want to see how everything ended up between each of them. I also really liked how at the start of this book the main character was already in a relationship with another character because we already had that established bond that continued to grow throughout the book. 

I flew through the last 100 pages  when I was supposed to be doing homework because I had to know how the ending played out, even though I pretty much called it. The more I think on it, too, the more the ending is growing on me. I originally didn't like the ending but when I look back on it now I find that it was a good ending for the situation.

Overall, I did enjoy this book. I didn't love it but I did enjoy it though I do think that it disappointed me with all of the missed opportunities. I did think it was a fun read and what we got of the time-travel was interesting, I just wished there had been more of it. 



Thanks for reading!
xoxo
Lauren



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