As a man in his 40s, I may not be the target market for a book where a teenage girl leads a platoon in battles against aliens, however the premise of this sounded intriguing to me, so I requested the audiobook from NetGalley and I am grateful to them for letting me read this book.

The plot to this turned out to be far from original, and far from believable - a corrupt corporation has done something with discovered alien technology for profit that the world is starting to regret, and a troubled-but-talented teenage girl is the best chance we have of surviving it as she takes to a mech suit to battle the alien forces.

This book serves as something of a stitched-together best-of of mass market sci-fi and manga tropes. Sadly, the world building isn't strong enough to make this pot of warmed-up leftovers a great read - too much is left to the reader to guess at due to lack of any hint or explanation until quite late on, and too many "oh and also this is part of the world now" moments.

All-in-all this was a passable read, and it may well satisfy younger readers, but I feel they can get the same plot elsewhere with much better writing.

I was unfortunately not a fan of this one. The premise was excellent but the execution just wasn’t hitting it for me. I also don’t think this was the right narrator for this particular book. Such a shame because I really wanted to love this

THIS gave me all the anime futuristic vibes I wanted while also having an amazing storyline and the narration was amazing!

Review of The Penniel Effect

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC of this audiobook.

This book starts off with a Ender’s Game/Pacific Rim kind of vibe which I was all ready to enjoy. Somewhere along the way I became very confused with the storyline as the writer got more and more in depth with the world building and flashbacks. It made it hard to follow at times which took away from the actual enjoyment of the story.

All in all it was an okay read. I probably wouldn’t recommend to a friend

⭐️⭐️⭐️

This is an exciting Japanese/battle mech Sci-fi story. In conquest of an alien planet humans have stolen and brought back more than just useful tech for profit, they have brought the alien as well and it’s not happy or nice at all. A small number of teenagers seem to be the only hope to provide protection using giant mechs. There are some nice twists as we follow the stories of the teenagers as they battle the ‘Boss’. Will they survive and succeed? Although a complete book it does leave questions to be answered. Thank you to Holly Lance Productions and NetGalley for the audio ARC. The views expressed are all mine, freely given.

The Penniel Effect (Gospel of Raine) by Michael Bar Daniel

3 stars = It was fun

Japanese inspired human controlled mecha units that are fighting off big aliens who want their tech back. Set in a made up, futuristic world where select teens are trained as pilots in ‘military school’. Feels very Japanese inspired as they eat lots of Japanese food and MECHA ROBOTS.

Am I showing my age when all I can think about while reading this book is Neon Genesis Evangelion? The similarities were so glaring, I was shocked to see no one else mention ANY mecha anime.

-Daemon (the robot company) = NERVE
-Giant robots called ‘Voice 1’, 'Voice 2’ etc…. = Eva unit 1, Eva Unit 2 etc…
-Only teenagers can pilot the Voices = Same as Evangelion
-Piolets need to calibrate to the Voice = Referred to as a synch test in Evangelion

It wasn’t ‘omg this isn’t original AT ALL’ but still far too many things for this to be a coincidence, or for anyone to call this an original idea. They’re fighting off creepy massive alien things that just randomly show up to smash things, tell me how they’re not inspired by Angels in Evangelion. I feel like we even had a little ‘Get in the robot Shinji’ moment.

Anime aside, this book was pretty good. I read it as an audiobook. The narrator, Keira Grace did a fantastic job on the voices, her narrative voice was a little too news anchor-like for me to fully relax into the read.

The characters were interesting. One of the main characters, Raine had a few flashbacks to her troubling upbringing and shed some light on her motivations throughout the book. There is almost a bit of a love triangle angle going on that was infuriating only because the boy involved was completely oblivious to the girl that was very much in love with him. I enjoyed the school setting and got a bit sad when not much time was spent there in the second half of the book. I feel like we got a lot of story within too few pages. The audiobook only goes for 10.5hours, so I imagine a lot more of the story lines could have been more fleshed out. For example Raine has so many flashbacks but not much in terms of story line.

If you like mecha anime then you’d probably enjoy this book. I thought it was pretty good and might even pick up the next book for more mecha fun.

The Penniel Effect comes out October 7th

Thank you NetGalley and Holy Lance Productions for providing me with a free audio digital ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Contect/Triggers
Violence, Drug Use, Drug Abuse/Addiction, Human Trafficking, Injury.
There is probably more, but none are listed anywhere by the author. Take not authors, this is your job

How I rate books
1- I disliked this book very much. Highly unlikely to read this author again
2- Eh. I didn't hate it. Might give the author another go
3- It was fun
4- Amazing and would read again
5- I'm in love. Give me more right now!