Lakes of Mars

ARC was provided by the publisher and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
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The blurb is what intrigued me but it only took me the first few chapters to realise that it was understating things a lot.

The story follows Aaron Sheridan, a young man haunted by the shuttle crash that had killed his family, which he feels responsible for as he was the shuttle pilot. In a suicidal bid he signs up for the Fleet, expecting to be sent to the Rim where the conflict between humans and the Verex is the heaviest. Instead he is assigned to the prestigious Corinth Station. It doesn't take long for him to sense that there is something very wrong with the command school, aside from the ruthless students.

I was expecting an average read, but I ended up finishing this in the span of 2 days while on the edge of my seat.

The setting is revealed slowly, with a distinct lack of info-dumps, seamlessly integrated into the dialogue and scenes. There was no jarring sense of being bombarded with too much information.

The plot is complex and very well thought-out. Any loopholes that I noticed were addressed almost immediately, resulting in a polished plot. The pacing was impeccable. We started with the first quarter or so of the book introducing us slowly to Corinth Station and its workings and the pace gradually picked up. It almost seemed to accelerate without notice, and by the time the climax rolled around the audience was at the edge of their seat and gritting their teeth for the final action. The 410 pages of my EPUB version were packed with events that were all given just the right amount of attention. The author also does not treat their readers like idiots. Clues are scattered throughout the novel and the reader's struggle to piece everything together is a large part of what makes this a fantastic read. Aaron's confusion is mirrored in the audience along with his desperate search for the truth in a place full of lies.

The writing was descriptive but quite beautiful at times and really helped me empathise with Aaron and the other characters' situations. Action scenes were also well-written, and I surprisingly found myself just as excited with the character discussions as I was with the actual action.

I liked how the relatively large cast of characters was handled and how, despite the first person narrative from Sheridan's perspective, I was able to understand the nature of the rest of the characters through his eyes. There was one thing I had trouble accepting and that was the romance element in this book. I understand that Aaron is suicidal and feels alone, but it still did not make sense to me that he became obsessed with Eve the moment he saw her. The way the romance was portrayed seemed to me like Aaron's desperation to find someone to attach to had been mistranslated as 'love'. This is what irked me but I did like how strong and motivated Eve was. One other issue I had was Aaron's near-perfect character. He has suicidal thoughts and is depressed, but he is also a great pilot, fighter, shooter, strategist and attractive on top of all that. A little too close to being Gary Stew, I'd say. I did enjoy seeing how naive he was during his time at Corinth Station. I really liked the rest of the cast of characters and how they were not merely sidekicks of Aaron's or inserted into the story just for a line or two. Everyone had a role to play and their development was handled quite well considering the fact that the whole story is told from Aaron's perspective.

Overall, I think this was an excellent story and the ending is an absolutely perfect setup for the next installment. I'll definitely be continuing this series and cannot wait for the next book.

Rating: 4.5/5 stars
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Short review on Litsy:
Book is not available in Litsy's catalogue.

You don’t expect an elite war academy in the middle of a grim war to be fun, or if you do, this is not the book to read.

Aaron Sheridan, our first-person narrator, we can assume survived because he’s writing his history, narrating with the elegant, vivid, and ferociously intellectual insight that comes of decades of experience. But anyone else? We soon—very soon—discover that nobody is safe.

The tone is set when Aaron opens the story discovering himself sent to this academy, though he expected to be conscripted and sent as cannon fodder to the front, suicide by enemy fire.

But emotionally traumatized as he is, he slowly discovers that he wants to survive—further, in meeting Eve, a fellow cadet, he even has a reason for living. I really liked the way his attraction to Eve was handled, and the fact that these two teens courted via science lab caused me to halleluiah.

Graves takes the time to build the characters, everybody complex, even the expected bullies. One could almost say, especially the bullies. And in an atmosphere fraught with tension and sudden violence, in which no adults seem to be present and the classes don’t count as much as the competitions, everyone has the potential to be a bully. Many are lying, for more reasons than one might assume.

So Aaron, who has been training all his life until something happened that threw his life into a tailspin, doesn’t know whom to believe, whom to trust, as he tries to figure out the system.

Of course there are wheels within wheels, as this is the start of a series. But Graves flings the reader in right along with Aaron as the pacing accelerates. The battle tactics and strategies are exquisitely written, ship to ship conflicts with awareness of the calculus of space battles, mostly silent except for what isolated pilots feel as their bodies are torqued through massive G-forces, and ground conflicts with the inexorable pain and terror of fighting against an insanely alien and powerful enemy. Harrowing to the max.

I always read a page or two of a NetGalley book, mentally sorting them for how long it might take me to read and the proper move. This one sucked me right in and would not let me out again until the end very late last night. The only thing to be said about the end is that it throws everything open for what is to come, after a pulse-juddering climax.

The thing I liked best is that the book is not all blood and brawn. Big questions, including loyalty, friendship, love, decency, literature and what it says about human experience and what makes civilization all get examined as these smart, emotionally wrecked teens try to game a system that seems designed to make them lose, or come out monsters.

This is being marketed as YA, so be aware there is a lot of violence and violent language.

I enjoyed this book so much that I spent most of a two day break in Cornwall glued to the pages. It opens out slowly, posing lots of questions which hook you in. Reminds me of Ender's Game but was less easy to work out who were the villains. The ending was not what I expected, but I will definitely get the sequel to find out what happens next.

♥I got a copy from NetGalley and this is my most honest uninfluenced review♥

Rating: 6 of 7; 5 of 5; 9 of 10

General view: Trust no one. That should be the motto of this book. A lot of times someone said something and I was "you're not going to believe it, right?" but then a few chapters later "oh shit that was real" and guess what a few more chapter later "oh no that wasn't true anyway" and that goes on and on and on. It's just so wild! Everything about that school is fucked up. Everybody is fucked up - or at least looks like it. So many plot twists. honestly, I love it so badly. You can't trust anyone. You'll spend the whole time wondering about everyone. I don't even like sci-fi! No, seriously. The only reason I request it on NetGalley was basically "oh I liked Red Rising and Illuminae and Heart of iron, I mean, I don't dislike sci-fi and it sounds interesting - and it's Mars! I mean, RR right?" and that's the point when I honestly think I do like sci-fi to be honest.


Ending: guess what? Plot twist lol huge cliffhanger, can't explain for obvious reasons, but it changes everything you knew so far. I have no idea when the next book is coming out, but I'll definitely buy it asap.

Downsides: I have two complains about this book. Firstly, the first 20% are extremely confuse. I get that Aaron doesn't know shit so we should not know it, but it was kind of annoying. Secondly, I was expecting the "when he discovers that officer training is not the station’s only purpose, it becomes increasingly clear that risking everything is the safest thing he can do" to show up way sooner. I mean, it's not like it happened in the last 10% of the book, but still I was at least 50% before everything changes.

Side note: I didn't found more about book two or even an author's website or even a twitter (which let's be honest is the best way to get in touch with authors) and that makes me truly sad.