Ah, crap. I’ve missed a week.
Up until this post, I’ve kept pace to write a self pub review every two weeks. It turns out that the government changing the partnership filing deadline screwed up my self imposed goal.
*Sigh* Now you all know my failure.
Ah, well, let’s get to it. This week’s adventure is Gravity: The Gravity Series #1, by A. B. Bloom.
I know, the author really missed a great opportunity by not changing her (or possibly his, but I’m guessing her) last name to something that starts with a C. Maybe next time.
The Mile High Summary
The same thought kept coming to my head while I was reading this book, in the voice of Tim Gunn:
Stars are real, people!
It was actually in Baileywick’s voice since I have a 5 year old daughter, but same thing.
Oh, wait, no, I added an extra comma there to make it work in Gunn’s voice. It really should be:
Stars are real people.
Yeah. There’s my summary. Since vampires and werewolves and aliens and robots and superheroes and zombies and Godzilla and Gamera and Gamora every other human/creature love story has been played out, this one is between a human and a star.
As for the rest of the plot, the world is ending and our intrepid protagonist Bronte is the key between deciding if the stars live or people lives. She has star power, and not the kind that gets you a guest role in popular TV shows (or, apparently, president of the United States). A hunter is trying to kill her and take that power, which sucks for her.
Wow, my summary is kinda terrible. I’m blaming busy season.
My Thoughts
Look, I’ve read the Twilight books and even enjoyed parts of them. It wasn’t the paranormal romance part. Unfortunately, the Twilight curse has infected other books with its sexy vampire bite, turning the YA genre into a subsection of the Romance category.
Thanks, Stephanie Meyer.
Gravity clings on to that romance formula like it’s the cat’s pajamas (which my grandpa told me was a good thing for, um, reasons). Except instead of being a hundred year old man in the body of a teenager in love with an actual teenager, it’s a billion year old man in the body of a teenager in love with an actual teenager.
I know, gross. But I guess if you thought it was endearing in Twilight, you’ll probably be okay with it here.
Oh, also, the billion year old man has been watching the actual teenager since she was born. Which I’m pretty sure is equivalent to a father’s bestie leching on his teenage daughter.
If you can get past the romance, or, even worse, you’re into that Twilight-esque romance (which I know is a depressingly high number), the rest of the plot was fairly decent. Stars-as-people is a little odd, but not so unprecedented to never have been done before (though typically in fantasy books like Neil Gaiman’s Stardust).
The book also had some good twists and turns in the story. For about 75% of the plot, the pacing was right on, pushing the reader along to the next event with serious drive. And right at the end, there were a few interesting developments that I seemed really promising.
Then the story just stopped, with a big, fat “to be continued.” It actually had those words in the middle of a tense showdown like it was some kind of poorly crafted TV cliffhanger. I hate it when books do that. Wrap up one plot with enough loose strings to get me to read the next one. That’s the way it should be done.
Titillating Tropes
I’ve covered this already, right? The whole “Twilight with Stars” bit I did above?
I’ve had a hard time writing in this section with a straight face for the past couple of reviews. Maybe it’s time to shut it down.
Self Pub Setbacks
Gravity is set in the UK, and I’m going to say with a fairly high level of confidence that the author is from there. I mention this because the book had a couple of phrases that seemed just a bit off, but then when I turned on my internal British narrator, it sounded alright.
So the few items that I would have taken my red pen to might have just been my left-shouldered American demon reading the line. Other than that, it was pretty clean.
Recommendation Level
Look, if you haven’t gotten it from the review, I was not the target market for this book. Gravity was written for the very large subsection of the world that thought Twilight and Divergent and Matched and Beautiful Creatures (ug) were literary masterpieces. Or at least a good way to spend a Saturday afternoon. If you liked those books, you will probably like this one. Especially at the price (I got it at the higher price, but it looks like it’s currently free).
However, if you’re like me and are getting increasingly frustrated with romance’s unrelenting move to take over the YA space, you probably should take a pass.