KAIKU

Spoilers!

Since I am going to be quite critical of this book, I feel it would be better if I started by pointing out what it did well.

Aliens: It is difficult for any writer to effectively portray non-human characters without unintentionally giving them human characteristics but I feel like Barbour did a good job differentiating the Keeki and the Human characters in many respects. The kaiku style of speaking was a really interesting take on the difficulties of communication between species and my only regret was that there wasn't more detail on when the human and Keeki first met and how they overcame these challenges.

Cover art: Beautiful cover art. 5/5.

And now for the constructive criticism;
Story: The plot had many redundant elements. Large unexplored worlds, meaningless character interactions that didn't contribute to the progress of the story and an unsatisfying conclusion. I feel like the setting would have benefited more if the protagonists could take the opportunity to genuinely explore each world and I no significant reason that there had to be so much movement.
[There really was no reason that the characters had to change worlds multiple times. The entire story easily could have happened on one planet.
Many of the moments in-between the significant plot points should have served to develop the characters and their relationships but instead was highly repetitious and offered little development.

Ending:[very unsatisfying. The humans becoming joint- guardians of the galaxy was completely unexplained. The nature by which the new alien race was testing them seemed, frankly, a bit ridiculous. The decision for an entire species to become the guardians of the galaxy was made by giving them a jigsaw puzzle and some white-water rafting?

Protagonist: Mile was an empty shell of a human being. No character, no real emotion and reacting completely unrealistically in many respects. I feel like her sole purpose was to just go along with whatever was happening in front of her regardless of any other circumstance. [If any normal young adult was kidnapped by an alien species, there would be a good mix of anger, confusion, denial, stubbornness, and fear long before they would be deemed capable of performing three days worth of puzzles.

Pacing: Consistent. Which is not a compliment. Pace should vary. The whole book seemed "monotone", never varying in degrees of excitement or focus or description. It was hard to tell when something significant was happening because the story had already moved on.

I feel the repetition and the lack of in-depth character and character development overshadows pros of the book. If there were to be a sequel, what I would like to see from it would be a tighter story where each event was fully significant and flawed characters, who experience true emotion.

I received this free from NetGalley and the publisher for an honest review.
I really wanted to love this book. The title is interesting, the cover gorgeous, the concept intriguing, but it just didn't deliver. There was too much jumping around. No depth to the characters. What was done well was the communication between Keeki and humans. I think we spent too much time in Mile's head. A different perspective would have been better. Maybe from Tyne's viewpoint. I don't know. I didn't hate it, but it could have been better.

Kaiku was an great example on how to do alien science fiction right and I throughly enjoyed it and would recommend it to other fans of the alien sci-fi genre.