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.

To me this book felt too much like a reboot of Ender's Game from an older perspective, minus the on-earth political upheaval. Even to the point where normal citizens have chips in their brains to track thoughts/feelings, the academy students are whizzes at everything, are broken into groups by colors, try to beat up and kill one another and it's all a test bu the teachers, battle each other in an arena, conduct simulated warfare... I just wasn't gripped enough to finish.

It was a pity that this book was made full-length, rather than written as a novella. I managed to plough through to the end in the hope that something interesting would happen and 85% of the way through it did - hence the novella comment.

The premise is interesting, but with so many characters, there is not enough character development to make all of the actions believable. I wanted to like Aaron more than I did. Perhaps, as the series develops and more about the characters is disclosed, at least some will become real. I am indecided about reading the next book in the series, but liked the premise well enough, that I probably will give it a try

Story takes place in the future, starting on Mars. It's a psychological thriller about school of military cadets that attempt to overthrow corrupt government. Well developed plot, with alot of time spent on cadet movitivations.

This is a complex and tightly plotted sci-fi 'space opera' told from the point of view of teenager Aaron Sheridan. Ace pilot Aaron is grieving and guilt-ridden in the immediate aftermath of a shuttle crash which kills his parents and sister. Aaron enlists in the military and is sent to an isolated cadet training space station, orbiting a lonely and seemingly uninhabitable planet. Aaron soon realises that things are not what they seem, either with the training programme, the space station, the planet below them or the war for which they are being trained to fight.

The large cast of characters is well-fleshed out and many of the students are highly competitive, devious and self-interested, with a minimum of adult supervision and support to guide or control them. Bullying, cheating and taking artificial stimulants seemed to be actively encouraged. However there are also friendships formed and alliances made.

Four stars because I thought the middle section of the book was a bit too long, with not enough action or progression of the story. However the last 25-30% of the book really does ratchet up the action and there are some excellent battle scenes including an escape via flooded tunnels (on a space station!) Lots of fighting, shooting and running, if you like that sort of thing. It's quite violent at times and the target audience I'd say is definitely young male.

A very interesting read. I enjoyed it. I especially liked how I felt unsure who to trust throughout most of the story. That made it more intriguing for me.

I received an ARC from the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for my honest opinion.

ARC was provided by the publisher and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Aaron thought he wanted to die after a shuttle accident killed his family on Mars. Instead. he finds himself in the most sought-after, brutal Fleet training academy in the Universe. Every time I thought I'd figured whodunit and why, a new wrench was thrown into the works! Excellent book!

Great book very reminiscent of Divergent but it was a great read and now i can't waing for e continuation of this story.

I liked the beginning of the book, but then it just got too violent for me. I don't really enjoy the level of violence that runs throughout most of the book.

Just could not get into it. This is a story of a young man from Mars who is sent to a training academy to learn how to fight aliens. The history of this conflict is poorly developed. The transitions from one situation to another are disjointed and made no sense to me. I never understood the hierarchy of the training and student cadre at the training academy. My stories need to be simpler with the story, action, and dialogue plain and unambiguous. This is a novel that you have to read and make up your own mind as to its worth.

A good start for a scifi series, enjoyable for everyone who is into scifi, no matter the age. Aaron, the lead, is probably a bit too good to be true. There are lots of other character in this fictional world, and I believe it's a book you either like and get into after a short while or it's just not yours. I hope it finds a lot of fans!
Thanks to the publisher for providing a copy to review!

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.

Man, this one starts off strong. Really strong. Too strong, almost.

Lakes of Mars is the story of a troubled, orphaned rich kid who unexpectedly gets accepted to an elite, Ender’s Game-style training facility in a failed attempt to get sent to the front lines of a dangerous war and accelerate his own death.

The opening chapters and world building are thrilling and engaging, but at about 30 percent, it gets painfully slow and dull. It’s a slog through the middle for a series of reveals that don’t land nearly as well as they should because the middle 40% is so convoluted and hard to follow.

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.