this book is a very entertaining, fast read that if you enjoy a fast paced sci-fi book, is worth a read!

I think the tagline for this book was perfect Lost meet the 100 it definitely is. The fantasy and sci-fi elements of the book were perfectly written with characters that really root for especially when things get tough.

Coming to this one super late, but it wasn't bad. A neat science fiction with a cool premise. I enjoyed the characters and the pacing was decent.

A new planet.... a hope for the future... a hostile world ready to kill and an orphan teen named Jonah stuck in the middle.

This book and series has great potential. Characters were well developed and the setting detailed enough to give you a picture of where you are. The plot was a little rough, but not enough to make it a good read.

This was a heart-stopping incredible book. The first chapter alone was captivating and just wouldn't let me put it down. The world itself was amazing. This was a great book and I can't wait to read the next book in the series!

The beginning of this book was insane! Jumped right into the action, nice and gory XD It wasn't as hard-core sci-fi as I was led to believe, and I'm really grateful for that. The only down-side for me was how much concentration it needed, and as I did this on audiobook I got lost somewhere in the middle as I tend to get a little distracted and then was off for the whole end of the book. I tried picking it up but couldn't connect all of the threads and characters and stuff. I loved the whole idea of <spoiler>them journeying to another planet, only to get stranded on a moon!</spoiler> And then the introduction of <spoiler>Tunic made me really uncomfortable.</spoiler> The narrator did a really good job of acting out his crazy voice. So life-like. I'm really glad I requested this book and read it, it was amazing.

Let me just say from the start, this book could have been really good. It had the potential to be so much more than it ended up being. This is because the author made one vital flaw: the characters. The book starts off with Jonah's ship crashing, and on the ship, there are a lot of people. You don't get to know many of those because the majority is death after the crash. However, you do get to know A LOT of characters, and most of them aren't even important. In the beginning, I thought a few characters were important to the story but ended up dying really soon after you even get to know them. This made me question why I should bother remembering names and characters if the author's gonna kill them off anyway.

So throughout this story of killing characters (because that's basically what happens), none of them really made an impression on me. The only character I remember by name is Jonah and that's only because he was the main character. Jonah has an interesting background, he's an orphan, struggles with his past, etc, but that is barely explored at all! I would have loved to get more insight in Jonah's life and how it has affected him, instead of this weak backstory that seems only to be there to give him some interesting characteristics. Because basically, Jonah doesn't have much of a character. Not that the other characters had much of one either.

The story goes on as these kids (whose names I can't remember) run around on a moon, bickering, fighting and overall never seem to agree on A N Y T H I N G. It gave me strong The 100 vibes, which is not a good thing. The immaturity of the characters started to annoy me so much.

The antagonist of this story did not seem to have any more depth than being a psychopath and enjoying killing people, which is pretty much the same amount of depth the characters had tbh. I can go on and on about these characters... but I think I made my point.

The writing style didn't have anything special to it if you ask me and even was cringy at times. With sentences like "it's as if he's been blown to pieces, and he falls over like a tower of toy blocks." it didn't impress me much. Seriously, what kind of simile is that?

 

Let's end this on a bright note, the story had a lot of adventure and action. There was something going on at all times and I liked that! I found a quote that really represents the story if you ask me:
'He almost died. Again.'

To conclude, I am giving this book 2 stars because I honestly struggled with finding good points for this review. It had a lot of adventure but with a serious lack of character depth and constant bickering, I found it very hard to keep reading this book. I have skimmed entire chapters because I just didn't feel like it was worth my time. But perhaps, if you liked The 100th, you <em>might</em> enjoy this one. I don't remember much about The 100 (the book), but I watched part of the tv-series and I felt like the character dynamics and story elements were quite similar. I will not say I recommend this book but if you wanna read it, don't let me stop you!

I would like to thank Diversion Publicity and Netgalley for this e-galley, this has not affected my opinion in any way.

Thank you for the opportunity to read this book. I enjoyed it very much!

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD!

Achilles, the first book in a planned trilogy, follows Jonah Lincoln, a first year cadet on board the Mayflower 2 on its way to Thetis, a planet in the Silver Foot Galaxy, accessible from Earth through a wormhole. After crash landing on one of Thetis' moons, Achilles, Jonah and the other survivors start to try to come to grips with their situation. Suddenly all of the adults vanish, leaving the kids alone in a world they know almost nothing about, despite the 1,200 plus page report about Achilles provided to each of them during their 380 day spacecraft journey, which apparently almost none of them bothered to read.

The first half of this book was basically non-stop action. Things exploded, were ripped apart, were on fire. People lost arms, were impaled, sliced in half. We ran, we jumped, we climbed. Pretty much everywhere we went the body count rose. I really should have been keeping count but more than two thirds of the people we started with have been obliterated, exploded, sliced, diced or squished.

The body count rose so quickly without a great deal of character development so a lot of the deaths had me thinking, 'Which one was that again?' then moving on without being sure because there was bound to be another gruesome casualty right around the corner. The maiming and death scenes in this book were quite visceral. Greg Boose is certainly fond of blood, vomit and froth dripping from nostrils.

The only way you were getting any respite from the constant action in the first half was if you were unconscious or dead. Like the characters I just wanted to go and have a quick nap to get a small amount of respite from the mayhem. There were a couple of times where I was so caught up in the action that I'm pretty sure I was holding my breath, particularly around the time there was the threat of people being impaled on porcupine trees. Throughout this book, when you think their situation can't get any worse, hold on, because it can and will.

The word that kept coming to me while I was reading the first half was cinematic. I could see the bloodshed and chaos unfolding around me like I was watching a movie. I was immersed in this strange world with its awesome gravity that allows you to leap over obstacles in a single bound and run with ten foot strides. The locations and the wildlife were described so well that Greg Boose seemed to implant a series of photographs in my imagination.

I liked Jonah as a character but I did get frustrated with him continually saying that his recruitment as a cadet was his opportunity to start over, which was almost immediately followed by him wanting to give up or thinking he should do something yet failing to and beating himself up for it. As an orphan who grew up in a series of abusive foster homes, Jonah is a survivor and as he desperately wanted to make a new life for himself I expected a dogged determination and stubbornness from him that didn't really shine through.

Around the halfway mark we met Tunick who from the get go reminded me of Johnny Depp's Mad Hatter in Alice in Wonderland. I felt like I was suffering the effects of a hallucinogen whenever he was flitting around. He was hyper, he was all over the place emotionally, he was unpredictable and the things that came out of his mouth made a fairly limited amount of sense. He was the town weirdo and yes, I did enjoy hanging out with him although I'm glad I was able to do so at a safe distance.

As I've mentioned before, the lack of character development was an issue for me. We learned bits and pieces about some of the people but not enough for me to form attachments to them or to consistently distinguish which person had just been killed off. When I got to the big reveal of who someone was near the end of the book I actually had to ask myself who they were. I recognised the name but didn't know which kid it was.

Then there was a description of how this person acted just after the crash and I was like, "Oh!". Then, "Hold on. I need more information. Is he the one that ...?" I proceed to search that person's name on my Kindle and it turned out it was the one that ... but I think that was just a lucky guess. My Kindle name search also revealed something else about that person and I honestly thought that fact related to a different person. That sort of thing doesn't usually happen to me.

The final quarter frustrated me no end. I get that there needs to be a set up for the second book but the storyline lost my interest. Without the vivid descriptions of new locations to hold on to I was annoyed with a lot of the characters and had some 'Seriously???' moments.

I have some unanswered questions and frustrations that are bugging me now that I've finished reading. I understand that this is the first book in a trilogy but I expect by the time the next book comes out I will probably have either forgotten about them completely or they won't be burning questions anymore. So I feel free to rant here I'm putting them all as spoilers so if curiosity gets the better of you, don't say you weren't warned. 😃

[SPOILER SECTION: I may have missed it but I don't remember there being an explanation for how the kids knew which symbols to press and in what order on the wall when they were in the cave. I know there were academics who probably figured out a pattern or something but Jonah also knew what to do intuitively and he wasn't an academic.

Not completely separate from the above, who created the portals? How? Why? Is there a codex somewhere that explains what each symbol means, what order you need to press them in to wake them up and what each symbol combination does?

Why wasn't Jonah as greatly affected by the verve as the other kids?

When Jonah is being guided by the thin white line, it that a side effect of the verve or a side effect of his blood disease?

Is the blood disease a real thing or is there something else about Jonah and Brooklyn that causes their eye issues?

As Jonah himself even wonders, what was so special about him that got him recruited? Is it something related to the eye thing?

Why is he now the chosen one and what's the deal with those stupid seeds?

Who or what is Zion?

Different kids keep trying to tell Jonah why Thetis is such a bad place. Just once, would he please let them finish their story?!]

In summary, the descriptions of location, animals, plants, blood and guts, all awesome. The character development, not so awesome. My rating is difficult so I'll break it down for you:
* First half of the book with all the cool descriptions and the movie playing in my mind - ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
* Third quarter with Johnny Depp 2.0 - ⭐️⭐️⭐️
* Final act with question marks and frustration levels peaking - ⭐️⭐️
* Overall rating - as there are so many academics in this book I'm doing this mathematically. If my maths skills haven't failed me the average across the board is 3.75, so I'm rounding up to ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.

I received a copy of this book from NetGalley (thank you so much to NetGalley and Diversion Books for the opportunity) in exchange for honest feedback.

Rating: 3/5
I still haven't entirely decided how I want to rate this book, so I'm sort of just going middle of the line. Once I got into the book, I couldn't stop reading because I wanted to see what was going to happen. But at the same time, I found myself annoyed with some of the things that were happening - vague explanations, weird things just happening in general in events and progression. Barely being introduced to characters and then they died in very gory manners. It does leave me curious as to what's going to happen in the next book though, kind of if the planet is as bad as people think, etc. etc. And you start to question whether things were really as it seems, at the very end with things that happen to Jonah.

I don't know. This is a pretty disjointed review because I just can't decide what to think. I was able to get through the book really fast, so I could get through the second pretty quickly. And I've read worse books. Maybe if someone just needed a super quick and simple read, I'd recommend it.

A solid three stars! It wasn't amazing, but it was okay. I had a hard time keeping my attention on the book, but the last 20 percent of the book was really good. I don't know if I would necessarily recommend this, but I don't think you shouldn't. Full review to come! :)

The following will be published on my blog, Keep Reading Forward, on September 23rd at 10AM EST:

In Achilles, a group of people are on their way to the new home planet of Thetis in the year of 2221, where their ship suddenly crashes on its moon, Achilles, instead. Upon landing on Achilles, Jonah realizes there is something deeper going on when all the adults goes missing. Along with surviving on the planet, Jonah and his group has to figure out a way to get off the moon once and for all.

Right off the back, this book gets right into the action. We start from Jonah being in the ship when the ship suddenly veers of course and out of control and there’s no stopping from there. We witness the crash, hear all the details, and see the aftermath. Also, trust me when I say that no small details are left out in everything.

As soon as the story and the details start to lay out, you realize that there is an entire unknown territory and there is a mysterious feel about the moon and the event. Everything that happens soon doesn’t makes sense with everything and Jonah realizes that to, something is going on.

What I liked most about the story was the fact that there was always something happening, but at the same times, there was a level of something you did not know. They had to survive, but at the same time, they are trying to understand what caused their ship to fail and crash. Jonah and the groups also have to figure out why the moon has mysterious symbols and workings.

However, there were a few times where I felt a little lost in the world building. I had to stop and try to remember what the world looked like. I couldn’t remember if it was all rocks like a usual moon looked like, or if there was some areas where there was live plants and stuff. I understand there are several areas where there are creatures and plants, but some scenes in the story got lost as to where the characters were. Luckily enough, most scenes were able to be followed easily.

All the characters were enjoyable to read about, even some of the annoying ones. I believe that most of the characters were well developed, but a few could have some areas of improvements. There was a certain character that I believed became to predictable earlier on than expected, but I think it was very subtle and I just caught it first thing. However, I did like the twists surrounding this character and a few others.

At the end, this was unlike any story that I have read before. I have read a few Sci-Fi stories, but not many taking place in outer space and that has a thrilling factor to it. It was quite different than what I have read before. At the end, I have enjoyed reading this quick read.

Jonah is a 16 year old cadet on a space ship called Mayflower 2 with 177 other people in the year 2221. They are on a resettlement journey to the planet Thetis and they're almost there. After being moved from foster home to foster home when his parents died in an earthquake Jonah can't wait to start over. He's finally getting the chance to start his life over by being a cadet and going on this mission. The journey abruptly ends when the ship unexpectedly crashes on a moon called Achilles right off the planet Thetis. This sets many into panic, traps many others and some perish. How can they survive on a moon with limited resources? Will they ever get off Achilles or will they live there til they die? What else is there with them?
I love the way this book was written. The twists and turns make this novel exciting and terrifying. I don't mind the ending because it is the first in a series and leaves you wanting to read more. I will definitely be reading the next book!

I received an ARC in exchange for my honest review.

The premise of this book on slightly appealed to me in the beginning. I was intrigued enough to start. Good thing I did, because I ended up really liking this book. The pace, tone, action, scenery and characters were so very enjoyable. It was very nice to read from a male POV instead of female for a change.
Jonah seems authentic, vulnerable and multi-dimensional. He is a new trained, first-year Cadet on track to land on Thetis. Before Jonah and his colleagues can make it to there destination, they crash land on its moon, Achilles.
There are twists and turns all throughout this book. And heads up, there is a cliffhanger. But I like where the author ended the first book. All in all, this is a great sci-fi gem!

2.5 stars.

This story is an adrenaline rush from start to finish. It wastes no time in jumping into the action.

The only problem with it being so fast paced is I felt the character development was compromised.

I must admit, sci-fi/space novels aren't really my thing - so if you are a fan of high action sci-fi books then you should definitely give this one a try!

This was cool. I don't always find a sci-fi novel I like, but this one was something I clicked with immediately. Enjoyed the writing style, the flow. I loved the action and gory details- another surprise for me -and it was just pure adrenaline from start to finish. Jonah was an interesting character to follow, cautious. The others made up for what he didn't outright express in the story, taking lead or choosing the role of psycho or coward. It was all pretty quick, which matched the action going on, but I may not be used to these kind of stories, because while I thought everyone was great, I didn't really find any of them endearing, except maybe Hopper, but only outrageously so. I'll definitely be looking out for the second novel, though. I almost ripped my hair out when no one refused to explain why- well. You'll have to see.