I liked reading this book, it was engaging and entertaining and very well written, I would definitely recommend this book!

To start with the positive I’ll say this book was clearly a labor of love. I found the concept was really interesting and I was really curious to explore it. There were a lot of moments that really caught my interest and I was eager for the story to expand on those things, but each time I was left a bit wanting. The downfall for me was redundancy and pacing. It was slow to get into and then the second half felt very rushed. Many moments felt very abrupt and jarring as a result of it. Had this book been edited for redundancies and spent more time explaining and exploring the things that happen in the second half, it would have been top notch. Realistically, I think this could have been made a duology to include all of the detail and information I would have liked to see. Overall, it read as if the author was so excited to tell their story that they didn’t slow down enough to give the reader a chance to pick up all of the information that it seemed like Shelby was able to just know, almost as if she were omniscient. Though it had its flaws, I enjoyed it and it certainly didn’t put me off of reading more work from Joshua Valentine in the future.



**and as a side note, I loved the inclusion in the beginning about women in stem and all of the content warnings which definitely should be taken into consideration before reading!

This book is bad. The kernels of a better book are in there, but it would take a lot of editing from a very skilled editor to get it there. The language was repetitive in a way that did not feel intentional. Having both a prologue and an introduction felt unnecessary and the prologue was an exposition dump. Not to mention the rape scene felt gratuitous.

I was drawn to this book the moment I saw it and was very happy to receive a paper copy. I was excited to start this book and it definitely did not let me down. To say I loved this book would be an understatement.
Joshua Valentine’s writing was engaging, fresh, and the sentence flow was clean. The characters were very well done and had depth that kept you caring about their journeys the whole way through.
The story line was thought provoking and a full of engaging twist and turns while being very original. The underlying message was profound.
If I could give this more than five stars I would.

If you enjoy Scifi and/or fantasy with a specific interest in space then this is the book for you. It's very well written.

I was interested in the book because the description sounded amazing and what I did read was good. However I did not finish the book as it is too scifi and spacy for me. I don't normally read this genre but was taken in by the premise

Props to Josh Valentine for writing a book and putting it out in the world. That being said, my goodness this book is a mess. .My main issues are that too many bad things happen to the protagonist in a short amount of time. The way the other characters expect her (Shelby) to just “get past it” and move on. Finally, the language but more specifically the dialogue.
There is such a thing as too much plot. While some plot points early on are essential, others could be trimmed with no harm being done to the story. The protagonist needs to deal with adversity to have a book but the amount of awful things that happen to her make this story unrealistic.
Her husband (who has to be bipolar) and her friends want her to brush these events off and move on with her life and project. This also seemed unrealistic as the missions goal doesn’t seem important enough for them to expect Shelby to forget about all of her very new troubles.
Now for the language, oh my goodness the language. I don’t mean profanity, it’s not a profane book by any means. Inconsistent is the word I think best describes the choices Valentine makes throughout. At times it’s stripped down and to the point, other times it seems he’s using every adjective he can. Sometimes he repeats character names to often it’s bothersome, other times I had no idea who was being spoken about.
The dialogue, no matter who is speaking, sounds like a conversation between my teenage children. The middle aged politicians and scientists don’t speak like they’re in their late 50s or like they have any regard for the important people they’re speaking to. Lots of sentences starting with “I just” and lots of uses of “probably” wedged into sentences unnecessarily.
I’m sure it doesn’t sound like it but I think this book, with lots of editing (both story, and writing) from a professional, could be really good. It has a lot of important things to say. It's a feminist novel. The character is doing her best to fight the patriarchy that exists in her world. Thank you, Joshua, for allowing me to read and review your novel.

I really enjoyed reading this, it was what I was hoping for in a scifi novel. The concept was great and the writing was really well done. This book was able to complete my expectations of the concept and it was really well done. I enjoyed the characters as they felt like real people and worked in this universe. I enjoyed reading this and can't wait to read more from Joshua Valentine.

"Though I couldn’t be sure, my gut feeling did tell me one thing: they posed a threat to the crew. Although I didn’t like following such a baseless conclusion, it was the only thing that I could believe with any sort of reassurance. That was why I had to leave, and find my crew. I’d rather die knowing that they were safe than die not knowing where they were. That was exactly why I had fought so hard to fend off Doctor Lucille and her nurses."