I'm sorry, but I absolutely hated this book.

I also didn't finish it - I only read to the 20% point, which is my cut-off point for books I'm not enjoying - so it's very possible that it gets a lot better afterwards. I don't think so, but it's possible.

The whole time I was reading, I was longing to have it printed out in front of me so I could go over it with a red pen. There are a few typos and things, but I think only the normal kind that appear in ARCs sometimes and won't make it into the finished copy; the problem wasn't typos, it was the *writing*. It's clunky and disjointed, absolutely *stuffed* full of very clumsy, heavy-handed info-dumping, and the dialogue is unbelievably bad. The twins, in particular, had me grinding my teeth at the way they spoke to each other and to others; they sound like poorly programmed robots, and if the intent was to make them feel different and Othered, it really wasn't necessary on top of their abilities and social-outcast status.

So many sentences were - I can only describe them as clogged, with extra words - not adjectives - that turned a perfectly fine bit of prose into something that sounded overly childish. For example, "But I had no tears for him, though." Cut either the 'but' or 'though', but both together are unnecessary and just sound *off*.

At the other end of the spectrum were over-complicated synonyms and metaphors, such as "Police lights painted scarlet tattoos that fluttered about like elusive butterflies against the clapboard sidings." Choose the tattoo imagery OR the butterflies, but mixing the two together just negates the impact of both.

There were also continuity/worldbuilding errors, such as when the ex-nanny is able to understand the alien Cel's question without a mask - despite it having just been stated a few sentences previously that the masks are the only way for normal people to understand them. (The twins don't need them, presumably thanks to their special abilities, but given that the nanny was wearing the mask until they asked her to remove it, it doesn't seem like she has the same powers they do.)

All in all, this read like a first draft more than an almost-ready-to-be-published book. Which is disappointing, because this was one of my most anticipated reads of the year, but I'm going to have to mark it as a let-down.

Destroyer of Light is a really amazing retelling for lovers of sci-fi. I love how all of the stories interweave. While sci-fi is not a genre that I like to read super often, this sci-fi retelling is definitely a keeper.

I wanted to like this book. The premise was so interesting to me. However, the prose was so dense that it muddled the story for me, and in the end I did not enjoy it. I generally love science fiction and it's my most read genre, but this book was not for me.