Earth & Sky

3.5 Stars

“There's a perfect dependability to math. No matter how many times you perform the same operations, the answer's always the same. As the factors expand out in their unshakeable pattern, my heartbeat steadies, the chill ebbs, and the wrong feeling fades away.”

I loved the premise of this book. You have the planet Kemya, where it citizens have basically turned Earth into an experiment. Travelers and Enforcers from Kemya alter the course of history, and they have been doing it for thousands of years. I loved that you had aliens involved in human history and basically controlling its course, but then you have the added ability of time travel.

The main character in this book, Skylar, is has anxiety and is obsessed with the number 3. She is consumed with this idea of wrongness and things not being right in the world. A lot of her mannerisms were annoying and at times she failed to realize the true significance of her actions in the past and how much one little change could effect the entire future. While Skylar was helpful to Win in terms of finding the weapon, she was not a very strong character. I wish she could have been written as a stronger female character. This is not to say she was weak, but there were many times where her characterization irked me.

As for the other main character, we have Win. Win is an alien rebel searching for a weapon to destroy the experiment on Earth. I did not have any major issues with him as a character. I also appreciated that the romance was not obnoxious in this book. There is definitely a connection between Skylar and Win, but this book focused more on their mission and their friendship rather than romantic feelings for each other. I'm sure their relationship will be explored in subsequent books though.

The main reason I'm rating this book the way I am is the writing. The writing was simple, easy to follow and enjoyable. But it fell flat for me, there was nothing spectacular about it and there was nothing that kept me on the edge of my seat waiting to see what would happen. While I did appreciate the simplicity of the writing in certain aspects of the book, there were other times when the writing did not fit my vision of the story. For the premise of this book, there was a large lack of true action. Yes, Skylar and Win were on the run from Enforcers and travel both across the world and time, but I did not have a big sense of adventure or action during their travels and “battles.”

Overall, this was an interesting start to the trilogy. I really like this premise, especially with the time travel. I'm also invested in this book enough that I do want to pick up the sequel and see what happens next in this world. However, I was not blow away by this book.

I received a copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review