In this unique setting and interesting story, we follow Lulu, a character who is more powerful than she ever knew.

There is an impending danger that might doom all of the people of Dalia to a fiery death. The first thing that drew me to this was definitely the stunning cover. The synopsis sounded fascinating and it is a very interesting and unique concept. The sci-fi elements and 'jargon' add to the world-building. There are some moments where the words and concepts are raced through and can get a bit distracting and confusing. It took a while to get into it, but once I understood the concepts they really added something extra to the story.

We have some interesting characters. There are a lot of morally grey characters and I really loved that about it. Mikal was especially intriguing. Lulu is strong and goes through a lot of character development.

The plot is intriguing but there were not really any unexpected surprises or moments. I do love all the drama because it adds so much excitement and fun and intense moments! The writing was not amazing, and it got a little bit rocky at about halfway. The writing was fast-paced, but it took me a while to get through it.

Lulu was such a relatable character. Ms. Gross did a wonderful job of showing us all the sides of her main character. The world she built and the people in it were fully fleshed out and had full narratives of their own to give

[Excerpt]:

Rating: 3 stars

Many of the books I find on NetGalley and on the internet in general draw me in for one reason and one reason only – the cover. That old cliche, “Never judge a book by it’s cover,” may be sometimes true, but when it comes to catching my attention, the cover is always the first thing I notice. So as I was browsing NetGalley, I came across “Domani.” The cover is phenomenal – bright, unique, minimalistic. I love the colors and how they work within the cover girl’s face. Plus, the title itself is unique and hints that this book will be some sort of sci-fi/fantasy/dystopian-type story, which I am all for.

Now, the story follows Lulu and her father, Mikal, who live on a planet entirely eclipsed in darkness. Dalia is their homeworld, and it’s been sheltered from the blistering sun by their “mother” planet, Laima, whom the citizens of this world kind of worship. But then Laima starts to move away, leaving Daima and its citizens exposed to the sun. Basically, they’re all about to die a fiery death in the near future. But there’s something special about Lu that saves them – she becomes known on Dalia as the doyen, who is someone that prophesizes about the fate of the planets and humanity on Dalia. But then, when she travels to other planets and encounters people from the Big Important All-Powerful Planet, the Capitol/Domain, she realizes she’s known as a Domani, someone who wields massive amounts of green psychic power (apparently telepathic, with the crawlers and chattle, and telekinetic, with just about anything).

So Lulu is 24 years old (as long as one rotation = one year. Also, one cycle = one day, and I thought this was an interesting way to calculate the passing of time, instead of the usual “day” or “year” – this is, after all, a different planet and I’m assuming galaxy / solar system). She doesn’t really act her age though. At times I caught myself thinking of her as a 16-17 year old. I mean, I’m 23 years old, and I can’t see myself behaving as Lulu did in most situations. Maybe it’s because she’s been sheltered on a very small planet with only a few thousand people, but still. She seemed immature.
[Full review on my blog!]

I’m gonna start right off the bat by pointing out that the cover of Carolyn Gross’ Domani is absolutely stunning. NetGalley provided me a free copy in exchange for a fair and honest review. Domani was published on 2 December 2017 and is available at Amazon and Barnes and Noble (I do not have affiliate links for these).

Domani follows Lulu of Dalia, a world shrouded in darkness, protected from being too close to a star by another gaseous planet. But that planet is now moving and Dalia is at risk. Overall, this book is really great for lovers of teen dystopian. It’s classified as an adult novel rather than YA, but that seems to be more for death than anything else.

From the start, Carolyn Gross integrates world-building directly into the plot of the story itself in a seamless fashion. We come into a world that’s bleak and clearly needing of saving. However, continuing a great writing style straight exposition is minimized and you learn about the world she’s building by seeing it grow around the story, which is generally rare of the genre. Overall, while Gross provides visual details, she leaves a lot of room for the reader to really let their imagination go.

She takes this world-building into her character development as well. Even the minor characters are strong and well rounded. We have an idea of who they are and where they fit. You never get the feeling of shallow characters. Right away I found myself picking my favorite characters and throughout found that she’d created them strong enough to allow that to hold. (Side note: my favorite characters always tread the line between good and evil, so Mikal was a fast favorite.)

I have to say my favorite thing about the whole book. Unlike it’s teen dystopian predecessors, our strong badass woman in charge never gets tangled in a love triangle or any romance at all. You can feel groundwork being laid throughout, but it never distracts and as with much of Gross’ writing style, feels natural to the story. I’m looking forward to seeing where that develops, but so very glad that nothing is forced or dragged right away.

Lulu really is the best kind of woman in charge. She doesn’t quite want it and she genuinely cares about others. You see her grow up from her naive roots and become strong, but you also see where she’s got room to grow and become better. She’s very genuine and I attached pretty early on to wanting to see her succeed.

I did have an issue, however, with some of the language used. Early on, we’re introduced to “Crawlers”, which are an unclear form of mutated humans, who are being controlled. Throughout the first part of the book, characters refer to these people as “animals” and “beasts”. This occurs before we are even introduced to any real particulars of what “Crawlers” means. Eventually, it’s clear that this is her way of working in some political undertones to the novel, but I found it a bit clumsily done, especially given how well written everything else was and ended up being uncomfortable with this stylistic choice being included at all based on the sociopolitical usage of that type of language to make groups of people inferior. Like I said, I get that’s the point, but to treat those kinds of political conversations as an afterthought feels careless in a book that otherwise generally doesn’t feel careless at all. It takes away from the fluidness of the book’s language and I hope it’s phased out in future books.

I won’t lie, this book was a bit difficult, I had to take a break before my usual 80 page no breaks point due to exciting yet stressful changes in my personal life. Unfortunately, I found that getting back into the story was a bit harder than I would’ve liked, and had to push through, however, a little after a third of the way through I was caught and rapidly read my way through the rest.

Like the teen dystopian genre that it’s following in the footsteps of, Domani never truly surprises. It leads you down a twisty path and each time you come to a conclusion, you’re generally going to be right. This isn’t necessarily a problem, it is only the first book, the world building for something that can continue to grow. There are a couple smaller surprises, and certainly plenty of drama and action throughout. There’s something comforting about not having harsh surprises around every corner. That said, each thing on the path takes you to the next thing, and I’m very much excited to see where the next book takes us.