3.5*

I was excited to finally get to this book and would say it had a cool premise. I’m a big fan of the training academy trope so I had a lot of fun following along with our main character Aaron as they navigated being thrown into a new space military academy and figuring out just how to survive.

The stakes were constantly high and you never knew what was going to happen. I mean this book was action packed. There were a lot of different characters introduced and I found that some of the time it was hard to keep track of who was who but with time, that got better.

I did find the romantic element to it to be a little unrealistic but I think its cool that they tried to have that element added in. It would have been better if it had more time to form a more believable relationship.

I also wasn’t a fan of the R word being dropped in a way that it was meant as a negative connotation. That always pulls me out of a book.

The way it ended leaves it up for more books to be made into this series and I would be willing to check out the rest as it was a fun ride (just stop using the R word like that please).

This was a fantastic story! I can't wait for the next one.
For anyone who loves proper science fiction, this book is a must-read. Set in a very plausible future, where the background is given to us without boring the reader, this is a story that captivated me from the start.
The characters were believable and it was easy to care about them, and the writing was good. The author just needs to hurry up with the sequel, please...!

This is another Netgalley offering from an unknown-to-me author.
It felt rather reminiscent of Ender’s Game and Red Rising. There were some interesting elements such as the restriction of artificial intelligence due to human fear of possible consequences, but it is a little over written and there was also a few clichés such as being bullied by the top dog and then befriending the weaker but smarter classmate.
After a while the grimness and violence overwhelmed me a bit and then the story took a left-turn. The pace becomes a bit hectic with everyone constantly switching sides making it impossible to know who to trust or believe.
It is exciting and well plotted but I am not sure I will continue a series with yet more stories set in school/military academies where children are mean, vicious and violent towards one another.

This book is a good sci-fi read, however, it is a little convoluted. It depends on the style of sci-fi and fantasy you enjoy, as I enjoy faster-paced and shorter titles. That is my fault for picking a book without trying the style a bit, or checking how long it is!

While I struggled a bit with this, dnfing it, my dad loved it. He loves a thick book with lots of world building and characters, though he did find it a touch confusing at times. He does through it.

Based on his feedback I'm giving it a 4/5, as for the right person this book will be fantastic.

This book was just average. There was nothing especially eyecatching about this one and I’m not completely sure what was going on throughout this one but I did enjoy it a little bit.

Aaron Sheridan is angry and upset. A shuttle that he was piloting crashed and everyone in his family (except him) died. Now with a death wish, he signs up for Fleet service, expecting to be shipped off to the front line of the Rim War. Instead, he is sent to Corinth Station on Mars - an elite command school. He immediately stands up for a poor kid who is being picked on by one of the most feared cadets in the school, Caelus Erik, which immediately puts a target on his own back by Erik and his goons. But Sheridan is not the push-over that so many of the other young recruits are.

Aaron isn't too happy with the way things are run and are or are not being monitored by the administrators. Are the inmates running this asylum? But with each passing day he learns new things and he just doesn't know who to trust or what action to take. But when a discovery is made that suggests he's unwittingly a part of a devious plot, he knows it's time to take action.

This is a quite dense book. Nearly 500 pages with a lot of information being presented. Much of this reminded me of when I read Pierce Brown's <em>Red Rising</em>. We have the reluctant hero stepping up and pulling people together. We have an authoritative over-seeing body that is present mostly theoretically at this time, though when it does step in, it asserts its hand. We even have a caste system recognized often by color (here it is uniform color).

What we don't have is a cohesive story.

I felt like 90% of this book was character set-up. We go back and forth - who do we trust, who do we not trust, who do we trust. And who is really in charge here and are they controlling as much as the cadets think, or do they have more 'free will' than they suspect?

There's plenty of action, as Aaron steps up and proves himself over and over, in combat and in skills tests, but the plot action only comes at the very end of the book and I wondered ... where did this come from? It was frustrating to change stories at the end of the book (which is what it felt like, even if the story at the end was hinted at earlier, it was never very present).

I actually really liked the characters and the development of the characters and that really kept me reading. But the major plot twist, which ends in a cliff-hanger (to sell the next book) just comes out of left field and didn't feel connected to the rest of the book, so it ended as a real let-down.

Looking for a good book? <em>Lakes of Mars</em> by Merritt Graves has some nice character development but lacks a tight story that would want me to read more.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

DNF.

I found the writing style very confusing and I guess is to reflect how the main characters feels but it made the reading very confusing to a point where I was not enjoying the books at all.
New chapter came along and suddenly you switched teams, you no longer liked that character, then a few pages in and it's like, they aren't that bad, then again change, what wrong with these people?! It was such a constant roller coaster that I ended up exhausted to the point of not caring. When you dangle the carrot out for too long at one point you just end up not giving a shit anymore. It just made it extra confusing and I ended up not caring.
Also, the romance. It was romance at first sight and Aaron just jumps all in with eyes closed and it was just not believable for me. I'm not a fan of this trope, and the way it was developed it was a nope for me as well.

I wanted to like this book. Lakes of Mar is a sci-fi, space opera style novel. And the beginning was promising.

But the storyline is very complex and around 30% became confusing. That's where my attention drifted. While I tried to push through, the book ended up in my DNF pile.

I did appreciate and like the idea of the soundtrack to the book. That was unique.

Suspenseful military science fiction, with well-developed characters and an intricate well thought out plot that does not depend solely on military strategy and battles, but also examines ethical conundrums.

I received an ARC from Netgalley, but am voluntarily providing my honest opinion.

Thank to Netgalley, the author and publishers for a free electronic review copy of this book.

Aaron Sheridan wants to die. So he signs up to fight for the Fleet at the Rim against an almost indestructible alien force. A posting to the Rim is a certain death sentence, after all. Provided that's where you end up. Instead, Aaron somehow ends up on a student station, where military officers are created from boys and girls in their teens. Aaron is an awesome pilot and a great shot with a gun, and turns out to be a natural leader. But, the station, with its own set of internal politics and brutal rules, could just kill him yet.

Lakes of Mars is very reminiscent of the classic, Ender's Game, but I think it is even more brutal and probably aimed at a slightly older audience. The characters are very well thought out, the twists in the story keep you guessing as to who you can and can't trust. The main fault I have with this is that, as the first in a series, Aaron's backstory isn't very filled-out. There are direct mentions of the incident which has caused him to be suicidal in the first place, but other than those, the rest is only slightly hinted at. A couple of flashbacks would have been sufficient to cover this gap, without spending too much time on the past. Also, it does get a little slow at times, with a few action bits throughout, and one major battle at the end. However, this was still a very good story and I would recommend it to any sci-fi fans.

-- I received a free copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for a honest review. Many thanks to both NetGalley and the publisher for this opportunity. --

A very rounded up three stars. I found the concept of this book incredibly intriguing, and I still believe that the story would have had a lot of potential, but the execution was lacking - though maybe my interpretation is not completely accurate, as it took me a very long time to finish this book, and I might have forgotten details while reading. It starts off slow, with emphasis on the world-building and the characters, and then jumps into overdrive relatively quickly, neglecting further character development and pacing revelations too close together. This led to the story being hard to follow at times, and, mainly due to the pace in the second half, one-dimensional story telling.

This is, as best I could tell, a debut novel. It has a soundtrack that accompanies it as well. The soundtrack is mostly synth music. Thus I aimed for a 2001 Space Odyssey kinda feel. Some of the tracks are better than others, just as parts of this book are stronger or weaker. It is a first-person POV, which isn't my favorite, but I know it's common. Even with all that, I liked this book. I felt the characters have potential and I hope the author will write another book.

My copy came from Net Galley. My thoughts and opinions are my own.

2.5 stars? (As in, between “it’s OK” and “I kinda liked it.”) The story is interesting, and it clearly has its good moments, along with mysteries for the main character to unveil, as he is confronted with layer upon layer of uncertainties about who’s lying, who’s an ally, who’s a friend, and who’s only pretending and getting ready to stab him in the back.

I had trouble to connect with the characters in general, though. The only one we really get to know is Aaron, and partly Seb, but due to all the conflicting hints he had to wade through, his position remained on the fence and made him somewhat passive for a while, which in turn made the narrative confusing and muddled in parts as to what was going on. There’s also what looks like a complex world-building underneath, but difficult to properly grasp. While I mostly prefer when stories unfold “in medias res”, they also have to contain enough hints from the start to help the reader get into their concepts, and here, what was clear for Aaron wasn’t always clear for me (for instance, the Box is mentioned from the first chapters onwards, but it takes a while to fully get what is is and what it’s used for).

I found the pacing lacking between the first 20% and the last chapters, too, and I had to push myself several times to pick up the book and keep reading. The ending is quite intense, though, and with a couple of surprises as well.

Lakes of Mars starts out super strong with the guilt-riddled Aaron Sheridan, our protagonist, heading on what appears to be a suicide mission. Feeling like he has nothing to lose, the story unfolds and begins to make it clear that he was meant for more and that the universe is not done with him yet.

This book contained all the things that sci-fic readers like myself love most - space battles, shady government dealings, aliens and spaceships! There is a lot of heart to Grave's work as well, as we really get inside the main characters head and you get an overwhelming feeling of transitioning from grief to hope.

There were a few slow moments during the book, where my mind started to wonder a little bit and I was hoping to return to the action, but it soon rectified itself with a heart in your throat conclusion. There were some violent scenes, so I wouldn't recommend this to really young readers, more the 16+ age range.

I decided to give Lakes of Mars a 4 out of 5. If you like Enders Game then this book will be a perfect addition to your bookshelf.

I received a copy of this ARC thanks to Netgalley in trade for a fair and honest review.

Okay.. The 1st half of the book was really boring and I almost DNF'd this book. But after few weeks, I decided to give it another go, and I powered through. To my surprise, I really enjoyed the 2nd half!! And the writing style was amazing!! Love love lovee the writing. This book gets the 3 star just for the writing...But as far as the characters go, I didn't really care who died and who didn't? And that was a set back while reading this book to be honest. Since I am a sucker for anything informative, I loved the way the author had described the world and it's setting. I am not sure how I feel about the ending though!

Will I continue with the next book? Maybe.. I am not sure.

Detailed review coming soon!!

This book left me confused.
I found the story highly entertaining and then equally boring in places.
If I could cut out the boring parts then I would have been more than happy.
For me this was just too up and down.

I wasn't in love with this book. it was very hard for me to get into. I struggled to relate to the characters and the writing style wasn't to my liking

Space academy? War? Love? COUNT ME IN!


This book was such a fast-paced, fun and inspiring read. It is set in space and follows our protagonist who has just lost his family in a crash- which he was driving...

Honestly a great sci-fi read I highly recommend! so thankful to have received an ARC of this from NETGALLEY!

A decent read. Enjoyable world building and relatable characters. However, it was slow to start and more often than not threw in paragraphs of scientific explanation that are understood by the end of the book but feel laborious in the moment.

Aaron Sheridan was flying the shuttle that crashed and killed the rest of his family. Suicidal, he enlists in the Fleet, fully expecting deployment to the Rim War, where life expectancy is short. Instead, he ends up at Corinth Station, command school.

There, the instructors are brutal and the students split into fiercely competing teams, willing to do anything to get ahead. Because he doesn't care about his own survival, Aaron fights back, and becomes a leader among the students.

There are surprises, betrayals, and constant action in this exciting SF story that is reminiscent in some ways of Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game. Definitely worth reading for any SF fan.