Zenith was a novel that I wasn't sure if I was going to read because it wasn't a storyline that typically captured my attention but I was tempted because I have been a huge fan of Sasha's channel for years. That being said, this review isn't swayed by that fact, I'm still going to deliver my honest thoughts. Upon first reading it (note: I did not read the short version published earlier), I was actually really in love with the story.

Everything felt incredibly fast paced and I generally really liked the characters and the world. Then, came the processing period, the time that comes after finishing a novel where I try to gather my thoughts. I flipped back through the novel for some reference points and in that process came to some realizations that I hadn't noticed before.

So the obvious thing is that this novel is written by two authors which mean two different writing styles. While I haven't read anything by Lindsay Cummings and this is Sasha's "debut," I noticed a couple of discrepancies with the writing style that make it very clear that this novel was written by two people. While that may seem like stating the obvious, with these moments, the story itself didn't flow as well as it could have which affected the impact the plot was aiming to achieve.

Jumping into the world - Zenith is a space odyssey and while I'm not a huge fan of space-centered plots, I did enjoy the descriptions, the first couple of times. There are several passages that seem overly repetitive which added to the overall length of the novel. As I was reading this on my Kindle, I didn't know that the entire novel was 544 pages until I checked Goodreads. For me, this can be both a good or bad point - I was able to lose myself in the story enough that it didn't feel like it was dragging, but there were a lot of moments that could have condensed if not for these repetitions.

In addition to the world, Zenith brings to life a wide cast of characters that are honestly just so lovable. I admired Androma's strength at times but felt that she could have grown more of a backbone. I loved the rest of the crew, and how the authors created such an awesome group of fearless heroines. Dex was a headache at times but you can't help but love him. And Valen...oh Valen...I have no words.

I feel like this review goes back and forth but that's honestly just how my thoughts are towards Zenith. I did enjoy reading through the novel, but going back, I'm noticing things that I didn't pick up on before that would typically have bothered me so my verdict is left kind of hanging. I do believe this will be an exciting series and I'm interested to see how it continues.

I have mixed feelings about this book. I've been skeptical about YA Sci-Fi lately because most of those that I read fall short of my expectations. But I decided to give this book a try because the cover was attractive. (Ah yes, I am a willing victim to the beauty of a book cover once again.😅)

Plot-wise I really liked where it was going. I love the action, and I ship Andi and Dex!

But there are things that unsettled me.

One, the emotional battles the character were going through... The first few times they talked about their feelings and inner demons, I was empathic (hello, my bleeding heart would not allow myself not to shed a tear or two upon reading their past) but reading about their sorry asses all throughout the book was a tad too much. Some chapters even focused only on those and I feel it wasted pages that could have been better used for other topics.

The war story was a vague. I don't get Nor's mother's mission at all. It was also rather hard to feel any sympathy for her when in fact she was evil to begin with. The only thing that makes me sorry for her was the maternal side of her.

Looking at Zenith in its entirety, I do find it a good read. While some parts are still raw, with a little more polishing, it would be even more enjoyable to read and I wouldn't mind continuing on reading the next books to come.

This is a Sci-Fi story so of course I was excited for it instantly. And it didn't disappoint. I really fell in love with all of the characters and think they are the best part of this book. Each have incredible personalities and backgrounds that I really enjoyed learning more about. The story was really entertaining and though I don't normally care for multiple points of view I ended up enjoying most of them. The only thing that stopped me from making this 5 stars was just how long it is. There were multiple moments where I felt like what I was reading wasn't necessary to have included so it just felt really long at times. Other than that though I absolutely loved it and can't wait for the next book.

I wanted to love this book. I really did. The premise sounded so fun (all female pirates on a rampage? YES) and yet...it was very much a letdown. I try to always finish ARCs, regardless of my opinion, but I just couldn't do it with this one. The book dragged on for far too long and was just, well, boring. Maybe with more editing to help the pacing and keep some consistency with the characterization (and lessen the amount of POV jumping), it might be better. But as of right now, I don't have a lot of teens who would be ready to make the slog through this book as it is.

I received an ARC from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
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Brief Synopsis: Andi & her rag-tag group of female space pirates are the fiercest and most wanted criminals in the Mirabel galaxy. Andi takes on various jobs and leaves several bodies in her wake, enough to earn her the nickname The Bloody Baroness. When Andi’s past catches up to her, she is propelled into the most dangerous mission of her life. Andi and her friends must come face to face with the lives they once left behind in order to see tomorrow.
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My thoughts: Zenith has the promise of a great space adventure. We have a group of fierce women who kick some serious butt on a daily basis. I enjoyed that this story focused on women (girl power!). I loved Lira the most and felt that her character and past had so much more intrigue and significance than the other characters. I sometimes loved Dex, probably because I can't help but love snarky bad-boys. I also appreciated the space setting since I am a total sucker for space dramas.
But as much as the premise of the story sounded interesting, the story overall fell flat to me. There wasn’t anything that marked it as special or unique - it’s a story that’s been told before.
And this was one of the biggest problems I had with this book. I felt like the Throne of Glass series was a major influence on the book/authors because Zenith literally reads as a ToG fan fiction set in space. The main character, Andi, is identical to Celaena. Both are known to be vicious killers, both are so strikingly beautiful, both are trying to escape a mysterious past, both have the same “snarky and cold yet caring and misunderstood underneath” personalities. I could go on, but you get the gist. And that’s not the only similarities between the two books. Even the WRITING seems like it was taken directly from ToG. The authors use the line “loosed a breath” and I can honestly say this is my most hated phrase that Sarah J. Mass overuses. And it’s not even that nice of a sentence. When I read this line in Zenith, I nearly smashed my tablet. And it wasn't just used once unfortunately.
Aside from that, I had such a hard time getting into the book. It took me well over a month to read the book, and that almost never happens. I had no interest in picking it up, and I often times picked up another book and finished it in two days and then stared at Zenith wishing i could just absorb the information by touching it. I never really connected with the characters. Aside from Lira (and sometimes Dex), I did not feel as though the characters were made to be likable, or even given proper backstories. There were SO many POVs and even 50% through the book I had no idea what was going on with the majority of the characters. How did they get where they are? Why haven't they done a, b, or c? What is this evil characters agenda? 50% through and none of my questions were answered. I think having so many POVs hindered the reading experience for me because just as something interesting was happening with one character, I was thrown into another perspective and I had no idea what was going on in that perspective.
And Andi as the main character didn't sit well with me. I did not feel like her backstory was a convincing reason to act the way she does. Plus, the whole "being an assassin/killer and feeling guilty about it afterwards" irritated me. Why kill people if you don't really want to kill people? Just doesn't really make sense. And I felt like many of the deaths that occurred were super unnecessary and only mentioned to build up the "Bloody Baroness" persona.
There were also some “Sci-fi” parts that actually made no sense and I felt the authors did zero research to back up their statements. For example, in one scene their ship is crashing and they are accelerating so fast that they might crash into a village. So one character says "let's lighten our load and that will slow us down." No. No it won't. It might actually make you accelerate. Do you know how physics works?
I wish I loved this book, but I didn’t.
Overall rating: 2/5 ⭐️

Androma, riding her awesome spaceship around doing odd jobs and acting like a space pirate all the time hiding from her own people,  until the one job she runs into the one person that should be impossible to run into, because he is dead, she killed him herself, is he a ghost? She will not go back to her people no matter what will she?
This was a action packed, non stop suspense, all round wonderful book.  Even though most of the main characters are girls there is plenty of fighting and blood from the Bloody Baroness to make any guy happy.  This is a great diverse book for all and it had me all the beginning and now I just can not wait for the next to see what happens next.

This was a fun YA sci-fi adventure.
The short description is female space pirates.
Sold yet?
Though slow to build, this was a fun (but long) read. The strong female bond between the Marauders on the run from the law was positive and wonderful to see.
Told from Multiple POV: between Andi, AKA the Bloody Baronness, with a high body count, Lira, her 2nd in command/Spock like character, Dex, a bounty hunter from Andi’s past with a complicated relationship, Valen, prisoner and son of the General & brother to Kalee, the girl Andi failed to protect and set her about her criminal ways, Khalen, a girl born to die, and Queen Nor, a queen out to get revenge for her dying people on the other systems in the galaxy that destroyed them....

This book was so long it almost could have filled 1.5 books in here. I saw hints of the plot of. Six of Crows, with the no choice but to enter into an impossible mission, but it went in its own unique direction and hints of Sarah J. Maas' Aelin, the badass female assassin. All characters had their own backstory and motivation. I saw some twists coming and some did not. The ending was strong and leaves you wanting more.

I requested Zenith through Netgalley out of curiosity. Like many people, I followed Sasha Alsberg's BookTube channel for years and I was curious about her writing, but it didn't influence me in any way. The truth is, I might have loved Zenith, had it come out four or five years ago. I just feel like it wasn't for me, that I read so many YA fantasy and sci-fi novels and it was a little too similar to so many of them. Because of that, this review will be quite negative, unfortunately, for I couldn't help myself, but the thing is : it isn't a bad book. It's just a book I've read a hundred times before and I'm quite over it.

The plot of this novel was very slow to start and for a long time, I was wondering where the authors were going with this. The pacing was a bit off, as the main plot was resolved halfway through the book, so I didn't really understand the point of the rest of the book. It was quite predictable and similar to popular fantasy novels (I mean, retrieving someone who's been kidnapped in a high security prison which wasn't high security AT ALL? Doesn't ring a bell), except that it was set in space. It had some clichés scenes just like... A ball. Wow we've never seen it before, I totally didn't see coming that you were going to make the protagonists dance together. *sigh*




(I have no choice but to only use gifs from Guardians of the Galaxy for this post)

However, towards the end, the plot became a bit exciting and the action picked up, but alas, it abruptly ended, which made me a bit sad, because I would have wanted Zenith to be like that for 500 pages. Besides, the novel often lost itself in subplots that didn't seem necessary, maybe they were there to set the next instalment in the duology up, but it was quite clumsy. Some of the violence also felt like it was there without any purpose and it was forced:

"When we bring the galaxy to its knees," Nor said, a smile slowly appearing on her rouged lips, "I'd like to repaint this room. With the blood of every man, woman and child who has ever lifted a finger against my planet." Darai swept across the tiled floor to stand at her side. "My dear." His voice was slippery, as if drenched in oil. "When we bring the galaxy to its knees, you can paint the entire palace in blood, if you wish it." Nor closed her eyes and smiles.
She could see it, taste it.
And it pleased her."

Yes, okay, but WHY ? They wanted us to see her as a psychopath,
but I wanted it to be shown to me by her actions, not told.

I don't have a lot of positive things to say about the characters either, because they were either unmemorable or were pissing me off. The main character, Andi, was a rip-off of Celaena Sardothien and Kaz Brekker. She was supposed to have PTSD, but many reviewers pointed out that this attempt at representation wasn't accurate at all and PTSD was only present when it suited the book better. I don't know much about that, but as I've seen this in reviews, I felt like I needed to point it out.

I was very excited because I felt like the book would have a Guardians of the Galaxy vibe to it, as it had a crew and I live for these dynamics. It was good in that sense at first, but Zenith had too many points of view and it was very confusing. I couldn't get a sense of who was who as the characters' voices weren't very distinctive, it was even worse because the book was made of very short chapters (there are 98 chapters when the book counts 512 pages); I was often lost and it prevented me to care about any of the characters. Now, for Dex, Andi's 'love interest', I disliked him so much. I love antiheroes and villains, but I couldn't with him. His story didn't add up, his lines made me roll my eyes because they sometimes were cheesy or forced and didn't make sense with how he was portrayed. I would have loved for the secondary characters to be more fleshed out, but as there were too many of them, it wasn't possible.

Last but not least, I didn't really like the writing style. Zenith was first released as a sixty page novella and you can tell, as there were so many changes towards that point, starting with the writing style. In the beginning, it was quite metaphoric, which didn't work very well because it made the book even more complicated to understand. Afterwards, I'm not sure the writing styles of the two authors mixed very well together and it felt repetitive. Besides, the authors often told us things, instead of showing them to us. I was intrigued by the world it was set in though, and I would have loved to learn more about it.

Overall, I really didn't like Zenith and I know I am very negative in this review, but it just wasn't the book for me (which is why I'm not even harsher in my rating). Had I read it in 2013, I probably would have loved it, but it felt so repetitive as I have read many YA novels. I still think people might love it and it will have success and I do wish for it to work out, but it really wasn't for me.

This is one of those books that began a little fragmented and difficult to follow (so many different worlds and characters to keep track of!) but the further in I got, the harder it was to put down! Andi's backstory was full of tragedy and intrigue. Each tiny piece was an uncovered treasure that made her that much more intriguing. As far as strong female characters, this book is full of them! Such a great read.

DNF. I tried to like this, I tried really hard. But it's a no from me. It had too many POV's, was unbelievably boring, and the characters were boring and annoying. I just had such a hard time trying to get into the story that I found myself confused and going back and rereading constantly because it just couldn't hold my attention. It also felt like it was trying waaayyy too hard to be a cool, edgy Sci-fi story. I also thought just the writing itself was terrible.

Wow. As a fan of Sasha from YouTube, I have been looking forward to reading this since she first announced it. I must admit, it was tough at the beginning to connect with the characters, but as I kept reading, I grew to really like the characters and storyline. I am eagerly anticpating the next book, and can't wait for it to come out.

I received an arc from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I had already tried to read the first 2 chapters of Zenith last year and it wasn’t exactly exciting (read, 2$ for 62 pages + way too many Caelena Sardothien similarities etc etc…) but i was very positive about the rewriting and editing process and then we get a whole book this time.
Uhm, silly me.
All female crew of space pirates called The Marauders (and this still something i can’t get over. Like, find something not SO ICONIC like the real Marauders from JK!), well known across the universe because they are bloodthirsty killers. But they actually sounds so much like cruel people but never EVER act like that. That said, Andi and her crew are hired by a general whose son has been kidnapped to rescue him. Yes, a general hire criminals to rescue his son, not soldier and it’s not a joke. The general doesn’t want to hurt the sensibility of other factions and planets so he choses some people that could be seen above the law. It makes perfect sense.
Then Andi and her ex-boyfriend Dex are in the same crew and they keep fighting and pretending they hate each other while they just want to make babies and while they should focus on not getting killed or avoiding a war, they keep bickering. It makes perfect sense.

Well, i see that there hasn’t been much of an improvement in Zenith and it makes me really wondering why. They had a very long time to edit the book and to build a solid story but the result is questionable.
First of all, these characters are fake. They don’t act like pirates, they are not ruthless or bloodthirsty or criminals at all. They feel remorse and guilt and not the cold hearted gangsters they introduced us to.
The romance was annoying and quiet terrible, it was just there to frustrate me and make my eyes roll.
Plus, how many cliches? How many tropes?

I’m very sorry to say that the writing and world building were really mediocre, there were too many PoVs and they were really confusing and there were issues, many issues. Like in the middle of Dex chapter, it would begin to switch to Andi’s PoV and generally it was hard to identify or distinguish one PoV from another. They weren’t really identified and they were weird because some things Sex knew about Andi’s feelings were not even plausible.
What i am sure of, it’s that i didn’t really care about the characters and how the story went on after a few chapters. I wasn’t really emotionally invested in both and couldn’t relate to their feelings.
The pace of the story was very linear except for flashbacks that give us many details of the past but there wasn’t something really unexpected or exciting or i don’t know, it was a bit predictable.
These two authors blended their style well, i couldn’t tell if one chapter was written by Sasha or Lindsay but the style was generally inconsistent and unfortunately the result is not remarkable.

I’m not obviously judging the book by its authors. I really like Sasha’s YT channel and even though i have never read anything by Lindsay i was looking forward for this release. But the result is disappointing and generally mediocre and i wouldn’t recommend to anyone nor i will continue the series in the future. Unfortunately.

I wanted to love this, but it needs A LOT more editing. The writing is juvenile and unrefined and the characters are one-dimensional stereotypes.

DNF. Too derivative, too many POVs, and after 30% on my eARC I just couldn't care about anyone. Better world building and fewer (or more sensible) switches between characters would have helped. Maybe.

Ok, this review is going to have the good the bad and the ugly in it so hang on for this review! Sorry for this being choppy and kind of all over the place. I am doing this review from notes I made as I was reading and am just going with it.

First off this book started out being very confusing. I was kind of lost on the world at large and a number of characters it had. This one has a lot of POVs some of which if you ask me it didn't really need. But, over time those extra POVs become needed as the story starts to wrap up.

This one has elements of Firefly as well as Divergent. Andie, I can see as a cross between Four and that wonderful River and the main captain guy in Serenity. (sorry his name has totally just left the building, its gone) Which was great. The divergent section is a spoiler so its below in the *** just highlight it to find it out.

***So during the ending of the book you find out that this drug called Zenith is pretty much like the serum in the ending of Divergent and of course the pull that Valen has doesn't work on her just like Tris. Although these things are not a bad thing per say I do think that it made the story feel like a mash-up of all the good things these authors could find in other books that worked for them. With their own spin on it. ***

As for the multi POVs being an issue, they turned out pretty easy to keep track of. I did have two issues off the bat, on who was who but after you get into it the story really just gets going and you figure out who everyone is and it sticks with you.

As for the backstory that was also slightly confusing. I wish that I had the time to sit here and read this book part by part. Instead of finishing it in just three days. Becuase this is a book that you are going to want to take your time reading. There is so much that these two authors have poured into these pages. From a fully formed backstory to this wonderful plot and twists at the end. These characters you can tell are their heart and soul and how much they have poured into them.

Some of the descriptions I thought were kind of unneeded. If by chance this gets picked up as a series or movie. Which I could totally see that happening, these will be an integral part of making these characters come to life. They didn't really slow the story down or take away from it. I just thought that some of them we just didn't need.

The flow in this worked one out well in most parts. I can't wait to get my hands on a finished copy to see if anything was changed. One transition that I thought was weird was when they are making their plans. One minute they are planning and the next they are in a new space system hiding out where they needed to be. There really wasn't any transition between the two so that was a little weird. A simple fix to this could be a chapter ending and beginning.

Another thing that I thought that was going to piss me off when it started was the timeline jump. We get alternating chapters of Andie, Nor, and Klaren telling us about things that happened in the past. but once you get into the story I really wanted another book that happened before all of this. I want one where Andie is in school and befriends Kalee and leading up to the event that made her who she is. I think with all this backstory to this one a lot of you readers out there will think the same. At least I hope so. Becuase, I really want it!!

The characters in this were just beyond amazing. Everyone was well formed and I just couldn't get enough. I hope that in the following books we get to know Gilly more because I just love her as well as Breck. We don't get as much page time with these two as we do the other characters so I hope that changes.

The book as a whole was one hell of a journey that I couldn't put down. I know I will be reading this one again when I get it in hardback and I will read it for years to come. It is an epic sci-fi fantasy that will knock your socks off and take you on the ride of your life.


Favorite Quotes:
Please remember that these are via an Advanced Reading Copy and may change in the final book!

Toppling her opponents like stars falling from the sky

She was an angel of darkness, come to him in the pits of hell. When she looked down at him, her smile was as bright as fire.

Death is a simple thing. It's pirates I'll never understand

She rose, snarling, as a lock of her hair tumbled to the floor. These Lunamere batards were going to die.

My soldiers its time to darken the stars.

I don't want the title. I don't want the job. I don't want the responsibility. I want to soar through the stars. I want to navigate through nebulous. I want to find my self so close to a black hole that it nearly shakes the bones from my body and then I want to overcome it.
(this one might be messed up a little. I used Siri to write it down and of course, it messed up. And I couldn't find it again in the book)

Overall, Zenith was not a bad book. The characters were interesting, and I was really intrigued by all the different cultures in the MIrabel galaxy. While I predicted the ending of the book, that did not detract from my enjoyment of it. The part that brought this book down the most unfortunately was the length. I don't think long books are necessarily bad, but when a book is long and feels long, it can make it feel like a slow slog and unfortunately that happened with Zenith. I am still very interested to see where the sequel to Zenith takes me though.

DNF @15% because I can't be bothered to read a six of crows fanfiction starring Celaena Sardothien as a protagonist.

ARC provided by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

1.5* rounded up.

Honestly I'm just glad it's over. Not exactly the sentiment to most want to be left with on finishing a book.

Buddy read with <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/3030788-melanie">Melanie<a/>

This was rice pudding. It was pretending to be a desert but it was multiple servings of bland with a bland sauce and a side of bland. I honestly don't know what's up with YA sci-fi of late but maybe I'm just picking up the poor examples of it to read? (*reminds self of the excellent The Diabolic by S.J.Kincaid - good YA sci-fi is out there*


Ultimately my lingering impression of this book is that it needed more work. A LOT more work. I'd rather believe that than that it was deliberately and cynically written to appeal to a certain less discerning sub-strata of YA readers who are happy as long as certain beats are hit. I actually enjoyed Red Queen more than this and that operates under the same premise of a collection of tropes, piled together without much thought except to be marketable in such a way as to hit the best seller list.

BUT under the trope bingo - and let's remember that tropes in and of themselves are NOT bad because there is nothing wrong with giving your audience more of what it wants (as long as you properly reframe which Zenith unfortunately doesn't) - under all that, there is an interesting idea. I really wish it had been handled differently because that idea was one I really liked.

I wanted to see an all female space ship crew in a story that concentrated on friendship. I would totally salute that.

What I got was an all female crew who were shoved to the fringes of the story so that our bland, under developed heroine - Caelena...I mean Androma - could indulge in unbelievable angst, a cringe-worthy and emotionally depthless romance with underdeveloped male-lead-of-the-troubled-diamond-in-the-rough variety, whilst embracing an undeserved reputation as the finest fighter and blood-thirstiest killer the galaxy had ever seen. Androma is a weak character in many ways and utterly unbelievable as the 'bloody baroness'. That part was so ridiculous I almost DNFed for that alone.

There were flashes of interesting ideas in there and interesting characters. But none of them were developed enough and all of the characters without fail, would wobble and become 2D at some point. Nor actually bordered on moustache twirling villain at several points.

World building - again some good if somewhat derivative ideas but none of them were developed enough. It's a common issue in sci-fi and space opera that entire planets have cultural characteristics - which is patently ridiculous if you think about the diversity of culture on our planet alone - and I do understand this is short hand, especially in YA. But it's laziness to set something in space and not even do basic research. You don't have to be Iain M Banks but f you write sci-fi you should know that there is no gravitational pull in an asteroid field and that you have to try really hard to hit them! They are not whirling toward you. Also blowing them to smithereens is not an effective strategy for avoiding a moving object in space. At that speed all you've done is created a micro debris field that will tear your ship to pieces. So your new planets aren't going to have 8000 cultures and languages. So you're not going to explain faster than light travel. Fine. Sci-fi lite is great but please don't act like basic physics isn't a thing.

*removes ranty pants and attempts to adopt a more normal tone*

All that aside, most of my problems with this book came down to the fact that it just didn't feel finished. It's 500+ pages and it could have been 250 pages shorter and lost nothing. The structure was all over the shp. The constant POV changes were unnecessary with some POVs not being needed at all (Dex, Karien, Lira) because they either added nothing we needed to the story at the point they were introduced or they repeated information we already had. That really bogged down the pace. I don't love super short chapters in books but sometimes they really work. I couldn't tell if they worked here because the constant POV changes knocked me out of the story.

I've seen other reviews that say this isn't a bad book but it's not a good book. I know what they mean. If it hadn't been an ARC I would have DNFed but more because it lost my interest than because it was bad. It's not well written. I think it needed a serious over haul and a chop. Then things like deep POV and character interaction plus tidier, snappier dialogue could have been introduced. But no it's no bad. It's just meh which is what's frustrating me. Because when you get to the end, the seemingly disparate elements come together. Too late to save the book unfortunately but enough that you see how it could have been a solid book, with a solid take on typical YA sci-fi tropes if handled with a bit more skill.

I think if you haven't read a lot of sci-fi or if you are a younger reader of YA sff you will enjoy this more than I did and the structural issues will bother you less. It was a miss for me.