WERBUNG
What’s it about?
Cyclo, the first and largest biological ship of its kind, is dying. A small crew of mercenaries have handed over the rights to their life to document the death of the ship, but the abandoned ship is anything but abandoned—one girl has been left behind.
Hana has known nothing but the isolation of a single room and the secret that has kept her there for seventeen years. When she meets Fennec, the boy assigned to watch her, she realizes that there is a world she has yet to experience but she is doomed to never meet.
When crew members begin mysteriously dying, Hana and Fenn realize that they are racing against the death of the ship to find a way to survive—unless someone kills them even before Hana’s truly had a chance to live.
(Source: Goodreads)
Author: Lydia Kang | Book: Toxic | Publisher: Entangled Teen | Publication Date: 6th November 2018
Picture source
What did I think?
*I got this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you!*
Can we first take a moment and appreciate this beautiful cover? Which was what made me take a closer look at this book because it’s so pretty. And also fits the story really well, a detail I just picked up after finishing and staring at the cover again.
Secondly, the content of the book was amazing as well. It is exactly the kind of sci-fi I love. It’s quite light, but with enough technical details that it all seems real and possible. The author is a physician, so I guess she knows what she’s talking about. A lot of the time I had as much question marks as Fennec had when confronted with all the technical things. But that just contributed to the whole atmosphere of the book which was dark and scary, thrilling and gave me the chills. Because same as the characters, the reader at first doesn’t know what’s going on and when we all do, it’s this “OH MY GOD” moment. And I maybe actually sat in my room looking over my shoulder in case someone comes over to hurt me.
Anyways. I loved the atmosphere. And the characters and their group dynamic. They were all a different species, all humanoids but from diffreent planets and they each had very different characters that made up for a fun reading experience. The book is mostly set on Cyclo, a spaceship that is actually alive and like a second mother to Hana, who was artifically created in secret and kept from the rest of the crew. Because of that Hana has a very special connection to the ship.
Hana is very innocent and a bit naive at the beginning of the book but soon learns what it means to live and to survive. A lot of that is thanks to Fenn. And here comes my only real point of critique: Hana and Fenn’s relationship. For me it was pretty much instalove and the whole thing just developed too fast for my liking. I mean, the two of them really fit but it was just too fast and too much at once.
Apart from that, I absolutely enjoyed the book. It is definitely one of my favourite sci-fi reads. It has something from everything, space, romance, friendship, science and that made it a very special book.
My Rating:
★★★★/5
