Author: Jay Kristoff
Genre: Science Fiction
Source: A&U
Goodreads
From the coauthor of the New York Times bestselling Illuminae Files comes the first book in a new series that's part Romeo and Juliet, part Terminator, and all adrenaline.Review by Nara
On a floating junkyard beneath a radiation sky, a deadly secret lies buried in the scrap.
Eve isn’t looking for secrets—she’s too busy looking over her shoulder. The robot gladiator she’s just spent six months building has been reduced to a smoking wreck, and the only thing keeping her Grandpa from the grave was the fistful of credits she just lost to the bookies. To top it off, she’s discovered she can destroy electronics with the power of her mind, and the puritanical Brotherhood are building a coffin her size. If she’s ever had a worse day, Eve can’t remember it.
But when Eve discovers the ruins of an android boy named Ezekiel in the scrap pile she calls home, her entire world comes crashing down. With her best friend Lemon Fresh and her robotic conscience, Cricket, in tow, she and Ezekiel will trek across deserts of irradiated glass, infiltrate towering megacities and scour the graveyard of humanity’s greatest folly to save the ones Eve loves, and learn the dark secrets of her past.
Even if those secrets were better off staying buried.
There was a lot of hype surrounding LIFEL1K3, mostly because it was written by Jay Kristoff, whose previous novels have all pretty much been absolutely amazing. I also had pretty high expectations, as a lot of other early readers had rated the book quite highly. I think, for me, the book didn't quite hit the mark. While it was undoubtedly a well written novel, there are probably two main reasons why I didn't give it the full stars/incredible rating.
The first reason was that it was very predictable. It relied on a lot of classic scifi tropes, and pretty much from the first reveals at the start, it was clear which direction the novel was heading towards. The second reason was the extremely flimsy romance. I would definitely have preferred to see much more of the background to the romance- because we were kind of sped quickly through the initial development, it seemed like instalove, even though technically to the characters it would not have been.
However, barring those two reasons, I felt that LIFEL1K3 was still an enjoyable read, with great pacing and writing. Although it was a scifi novel, it was definitely quite accessible in that it didn't have that really slow build up + infodump that a lot of scifi novels have. In fact, I thought the pacing was right on point, and the book could easily be read in a single sitting.
Overall, despite some flaws, I still enjoyed LIFEL1K3. It ends on a bit of a twist which means I'm looking forward to seeing how things develop in the next book.
Really liked it
RatingsOverall: 8/10
Plot: 4/5
Romance: 3/5
Writing: 4/5
World Building: 3.5/5
Characters: 3/5
Cover: 2/5
