I wonder if I was listening to an abridged version? It was only 3hrs long and extremely hard to follow. Confusing 2d characters with no motivation did odd things, timelines made no sense and names were hard to track. I’ve heard this is a good series so I was surprised.

Cheesy fantasy, and not one that I really enjoyed, but I slogged through it.

Ok but that silly ending though.

DNF - PG 29

Why?

I don't like the writing style - it pulls me out of the story way too often. Yana also blunders and some odd almost 'I'm better than you' mentality crossed with 'I'm so out of my depth' - which, admittedly, she is. Totally.

I could like that part of it, but the way she keeps thinking the worst of people and trying to shift the blame in her mind when she screws up...yeah, that's not working.

This....was a weird book. Well written and interesting....but ultimately very, very weird. I can't say that I loved it but I also didn't hate it. I did finish it, which is something, but I don't plan on finishing the series either. There were lots of times, while reading, that had me screaming, mentally, that this planet/people are brainwashing Yana....and honestly that feeling never went away. It was just plain weird.

Space travelers meet Inuit on a terraformed planet of ice and snow. The inhabitants seem to have a very close bond to their environment. The bond runs counter to what is "known" by the scientists and explorers so is discounted. Not a brilliant piece of writing, but the premise is fascinating and the novel is well-plotted.

I listened to the audiobook version of this and am wondering if I somehow managed to get a poorly edited abridged version or something. It seems weird that a book that Goodreads has clocking in as 384 pages for the ebook format is an audiobook that's only 3.5 hours long. That seems off to me. Not only that but it felt rushed and was confusing in parts.

i was rather enjoying the beginning of this book but there were definite moments where it just seemed like something happened too quickly.

Spoiler

Namely the romance aspect. She met the guy the evening before then the next day she goes with him to the hot springs and he just creeps up on her and kisses her neck. And she was totally cool with it, which is fine except there was zero indication in the previous text/dialogue that the two characters were attracted to each other that much.

It feels like there was something that I was missing. The familiarity between the characters moves so quickly and it never felt authentic to me.

One of the reasons I think the authenticity of the characters relationships seemed off is that time was hard to follow. I have no idea how long Yana was on the planet from the time of her arrival until the final scene. Sometimes there would be moments where it was noted that weeks had passed and yet other times there were scenes which had people journeying long distances that seemed to have taken a while to do and then it was mentioned that someone would return back to the town or someone would join them and it would take them no time at all to do so.

As the entire story only took 3.5 hours to tell, the conflict and the resolution of it felt forced and rushed. There were a surprising amount of people to track and oftentimes at the end I was confused on who was where and how they had gotten there.

A plus was that this was narrated by Marina Sirtis (aka Deanna Troi on TNG) and she has a wonderful reading voice and does a really nice job with the variety of voices she provides. Frankly, I'd be happy to listen to anything that she narrates and I think that probably helped a lot in my enjoyment of this one.

I admit failure. I loved this book when I was in middle and high school, I must have read it a dozen times or more. Now, I wonder what my younger self was thinking.