A fun and easy read

I received an e-ARC from the publisher from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Review and blog tour can be found on *Milky Way of Books*

This book was one of the most unexpected surprises of 2017! I knew from the blurb that it was going to be a diverse book, but I never expected the whole spectrum of the LGTB+ themes to show! Add in the sci-fi genre, a picturesque planet which is far more dangerous than it shows and you have a thrilling adventure which takes place in the span of 27 hours.

Honestly, for a moment I was reminded of the show "24 Hours", which had a similar base; the story evolves through the span of these hours and the protagonists all face their troubles and fears.

I loved every character in the book, but mostly I loved Nyx and Jude. They were so empathetic, striving to express their emotions and fears. Not that the rest of the gang wasn't good but these two hit too close to my heart for me.

Did I also mention that the monsters of the planet are actually....gargoyles? YUP, you had me with the term gargoyles! Also, the book has action and you don't get bored through the course of the plot.
I really can't wait to see what will happen to the next book!

Disclaimer: I received an e-copy of this book on NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I want to start my review by linking to Aimal's, who talks about the racial representation in this book. While diversity in books is important, it's just really weird that the most specicist characters in this book where the non-white ones.

Now this book is probably one of the most diverse books I've ever read. 3 out of 5 main characters are non-white, not a single one of them is cishet, there's a hearing impaired main character, that lives with her deaf grandmother and uses sign language to communicate with her and her friends. 

While I really liked the LGBT+ rep that we got in this book and that each of these identities are important to the characters, the racial rep was mostly just there without ever playing a role. The story is set in the future and apparently in a post-race world. We don't discriminate based on skin color anymore. We just hate monsters now. While of course neither someone's race nor someone's sexuality nor anything else should ever be the be-all of a character, portraying a diverse cast, but having the racial aspects of said cast disappear in the background because "race no longer matters, there's only one culture now, the human culture (aka western, mostly america-centric)" is not the best of racial representation. Barely any of the characters have ties to their culture, this all just disappeared. Now, of course, that is a common sci-fi trope, but I just really expected better from a book that was hyped as a super diverse sci-fi story. Colorblindness is not the same as actual acceptance. (especially with the colonization-allegory tied into all of this and the absolutely terrible part where the Nigerian/Indian character is the one that hates the chimera the most and then has to be educated by the white characters that maybe colonization is bad, you know?)

Another thing that bothered me about this story is that fact that we just have 72 hours for all the plot. While this is an interesting concept it just messes up the pacing a lot. We have to get to know way too many characters for this limited amount of time. Hell, one couple falls in love and tries to have sex all in the middle of fighting a war. In 72 hours. Yeah... not really the most believable of love stories. 

Other than that, this was certainly an enjoyable fast-paced read and I definitely adored all the representation we got, but especially the racial rep could have been done better.

2.5 stars. All the credit for a diverse cast of characters, but unfortunately the story and the writing itself was not such a win for me.

Tristina Wright has done a great job assembling a wonderfully diverse character set, with a range of ethnicities, genders, and sexual orientations represented as the norm in the world of 27 Hours. I definitely want to give her full credit for that. However, I felt that the writing was very lightweight, and not enough thought was given to the actual story these characters are acting out.

The worldbuilding is very minimal, and the dialogue felt rather thoughtless. The characters all seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time thinking and talking about sex and romantic feelings, or complications arising from those, or a lack of those in the case of the asexual character, and this seemed slightly out of place considering that they were all supposed to be under attack, or imminent threat of attack, throughout most of the book.

I appreciate in essence what Wright was trying to achieve here, but I think her story objective just got a bit muddled. This book could either be a good romance or a good action story, but instead it has tried to be both, and kind of failed to do either very well.

I don't like to say negative things about debut authors, because I think it takes a lot of courage to put your work out there. Unfortunately, this particular book didn't work for me, but it wasn't terrible, and it might be a good read for someone else. I do hope Wright keeps writing, because I think there is potential if she can just find the right focus and go a bit deeper into her story elements.

I was going to read this book. But I'd barely begun when I got curious and started looking through some reviews. It looks like there was some trouble between the author and reviewers. Maybe some discussions about inappropriate content too. So, before I get any further in this story or in this mess, I'm going to set this one aside.

Really good fun -fast moving YA sci-fi yarn. At times perhaps it moves too fast to fully develop its characters but the queer rep is wonderful and it raises interesting issues round othering and colonisation. Definitely looking forward to the sequel. More Rumor/Jude? Yes please 😍

I am big on science fiction and anything to do with space. However, the pro-colonization message (in that we don't get the POV of the indigenous people) as well as the white characters driving the elimination of prejudice in many ways means that to me, it fails. The author spent a good many months promoting this book as GAY TEENS IN SPACE, GUYS but it has to go beyond one's excitement (which often comes off as patting themselves on the back) for the representation and you can't justify problematic aspects with the things it does well. I mean, you CAN, and it's complicated, but you can't pretend the problematic stuff isn't there just because something else may be done well. Even the racial representation, there was really nothing to distinguish the people of color from the white people, and you have to ask if it's really racial representation in that sense - like how you can determine if your hot side lady character could or could not be replaced by a sexy lamp.

I got to read some of this book for free thanks to a friend, but I didn't get very far, and now that the allegations have come out against the author (who reacted to it in a way that makes me believe the accursor(s) more) I don't care to continue, and certainly won't be spending money on this book or anything that comes after it.

Update- 12/2/2018.

My review has been took down from here and my blog. I will not support this author!