I don’t know how to rate this book. 1 star? 2 stars?

The cover is amazing, I love it. But the book itself is.... not good. I dnf it at 11 %. It was too much. The worldbuilding was nonexistent and the characters were unbelievable.

“Alien busters” eBook was published in 2016 and was written by Safa Shaqsy (http://safashaqsy.com). Ms. Shaqsy has published five novels. This is the first in a planned series surrounding the “Alien Busters”.

I categorize this novel as ‘G’. The story is set on an Earth colony on a far away world. The primary character is young Nathalie, an Alien Buster.

As an Alien Buster, she and her colleagues, kill every alien that they can find. Her city on the colonized world believes them all to be a threat to humans. Then one day as she was on a mission to search and destroy aliens, she comes across a young alien and, instead of destroying it, smuggles it back to her home.

She soon involves her two best friends in her deception. They all think there is something that those in control of her city are hiding. They are trying to help Nathalie discover the hidden secrets and keep her ‘pet’ alien, Star, a secret.

I was glad that this was a 185 page read of less than three hours. I did not think this Young Adult Science Fiction novella was very good. The plot was simplistic and weak. I will not be reading any more in this series. The cover art is OK, but has little to do with the plot of the story. I give this novel a 2.9 (rounded up to a 3) out of 5.

Further book reviews I have written can be accessed at https://johnpurvis.wordpress.com/blog/.

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This is a young adult novel and maybe I am not as thrilled with this because I am not part of the target audience but I found the tale to be rather unoriginal and lacking in world building and characterization.

Our heroine is Nathalie, a member of Alien Busters, an organization whose job is to hunt and terminate aliens that threaten her home of Adkad City on the planet of Zaldea. While on a mission, her team encounters aliens obviously killed by other, more deadly, aliens. Nathalie finds a baby alien and rather than kill it she hides it and turns it into a pet.

This is supposed to be set on a new planet that has been colonized for generations yet it has not been mapped and the inhabitants of Adkad City don't know anything beyond the security walls. And there aren't even any species names until late in the book.
I am willing to forgive the poor spelling and grammar as this is probably an advance galley. But the forced antagonism between Nathalie and her boss does not work, nor does her trusting everyone on first sight even though she keeps saying she doesn't do this.
Nathalie keeps taking the blame for failed missions even though, the way it is written, she is not. Character's make ridiculous actions as when a teammate climbs an alien tower and is killed by an alien. She refused to listen to anyone including Nathalie.
And the discovery of an alien spaceship is right out of left field. More will be done with this in the sequel I am sure but I won't be along for this ride.

I'm not entirely sure what to make of this book, it was very odd and although I read to the end, I'm not sure it has convinced me to read any sequels.

I regret that I cannot recommend this book in any way, shape or form.

I really don't know if this was written for children, or by a child, but the simplistic prose was just too much to cope with (e.g.: Hister - High Speed Copter; Inhab - Intelligent Hand Band; Flars - Floating Cars)

DNF - 40%


I couldn't do it.

I tried, I really did. Did any of you ever read any Bruce Coville novels like [book:Space Brat|823696]? I couldn't stop thinking of Poodnobie the whole time.

The writing here is beyond YA, which was surprising to me. Yes, maybe I was doing a bit of cover judging, but I still don't see where this is labeled as a young young YA book. The characters were incredibly flat, and the story unimaginative and to be honest there wasn't anything that I enjoyed.

I hope others get more than I did from this book, because it is obvious there was a lot of effort put in to writing it.

This book was provided to me free of charge via NetGalley, which had no impact on my review. After all, free is the same price as the library!

Very cool science fiction book, definitely one I would recommend for anyone who likes their scifi mixed with a mystery. There are lot of unpredictable twists that kept me guessing until the end. I enjoyed every minute of it and can't wait until the next one.