Written in first person, our heroine Adeptia is given half a strange locket by her mother. Her father has been missing since she was a child, taken by the tyrannical Absolutes and then the night the story begins, they come for her mother, and for her…

The plot is basic, and characterisation very limited. This book is screaming for an editor and formatter. There’s not really much to say here.

The writing is very flat. The sentences read separately and isolated, rather than flowing into each other e.g. “X did this. Y did that.” and it doesn’t pull the reader through the story. Several sentences in succession will say the same thing in different ways. e.g. the Locket paragraph early on, where five lines in succession all tell you that her quest is to protect the locket and find the other half.

Grammar and Formatting? Oh boy. Double exclamation marks and interrobangs. There are problems around speech, which is speech marks but not on new lines and has missing commas within the speech marks. There appears to be a default bold font set for the book, which doesn’t make it easy to read. By loc 42 I was considering quitting and giving it a DNF, but it was a short story so I slugged on. Occasionally the grammar flubs produce amusing effects – I’d like to know what a ‘life baby’ is (“Guard this with your life baby”), and the difference between ‘drug’ and ‘dragged’ is important. And if your ‘hands were glued’, no wonder your brother can’t let go. Taking pot shots at the writing and grammar is cruel, so I will stop. Just assume my copy is covered in red lines.

I honestly don’t know who I would recommend this too. It is a little too basic to appeal to space opera fans, and the formatting makes it difficult for readers, particularly younger ones, to follow. With the issues cleared up it could be a good children’s sci-fi but in my opinion there are a lot of issues to clear up.