Bookworm Speaks!- Breaking Sky Review
Bookworm Speaks!
Breaking Sky
by Cori McCarthy
****
The Story: Fly to the last drop of fuel. Fight to the last drop of blood.
Showoff. Reckless. Maverick. Chase Harcourt, call sign "Nyx", isn't one to play it safe. In the year 2048, America is locked in a cold war – and the country's best hope is the elite teen fighter pilots of the United Star Academy. Chase is one of only two daredevil pilots chosen to fly an experimental "Streaker" jet. But few know the pain and loneliness of her past. All anyone cares about is that Chase aces the upcoming Streaker trials, proving the prototype jet can knock the enemy out of the sky.
But as the world tilts toward war, Chase cracks open a military secret. There's a third Streaker, whose young hotshot pilot, Tristan, can match her on the ground and in the clouds. And Chase doesn't play well with others. But to save her country, she may just have to put her life in the hands of the competition.
Note: Many comparisons have been made between this book and the film ‘Top Gun.’ Bookworm has never seen this movie, so he will be unable to compare the two and any references made in the text went right over his head.
That said…how does the book hold up?
Fighter planes.
Seriously? Could anything be cooler? Bookworm prefers prop-driven combat aircraft these days, but like every other American boy, he had a collection of fighter plane toys that he loved to death, and this is a story about fighter planes and the elite pilots who fly them. Any fan of such things will really enjoy this book. Even though it has its share of flaws.
Nyx is very hard to warm up to as a character. She’s arrogant, stand-offish, and just seems to use people. To be completely honest, that nearly killed the book for Bookworm. The key to writing any protagonist is to make them sympathetic to reader. The reader wants to root for them and it was very hard to root for Nyx. She too much of a hard-ass and too little of a badass. Thankfully, Bookworm’s commitment to finish every book he starts paid off and we start to peel back the layers of Nyx and see why she became what she is today. Not everyone share’s Bookworm’s resolution and therefore may put the book down in the face of such and abrasive character.
Adding to the flawed character is once more the introduction of romantic subplot between Nyx and Tristan. Bookworm can’t remember a thing about this arc which lends even more credence to the view that it was a completely unnecessary arc. This book suffers from a few too many subplots and the story as whole could have used one more editing session at least.
Once the reader warms up to them though, the book really becomes a thrill-ride. The action scenes are wonderful and fast-paced. Action scenes can be very difficult to write normally and modern combat is not as exciting as popular media but in this book the author pulls it off excellently. The military is such a dynamic environment that it is not a small wonder that so many stories take place around the military.
While Bookworm tends to avoid such matters, it is interesting the way that the author analyzes American political and economic standings and creates an interesting hypothesis on how it could all fall apart. In this future, the world is once again engulfed in a Cold War. This time it is between the United States and an Asian faction called Ri Xoing Di. One of the first things Ri Xoing Di did was cut off imports to the United States and thusly plunging the country into social and economic turmoil. In a lot of ways, the U.S. in this book is like the old British Empire. It was the most powerful nation in the world but a lot of its wealth and resources came from overseas. Bookworm has no intention of getting into a political rant right now but he will say that the dystopian overtures made in this book are a lot more plausible than other books.
However, this leads into what Bookworm found to be the most frustrating about this book: the lack of context. The world building has an interesting premise but all it really seems to have is the premise, it never gets into the nitty gritty. It is implied that Ri Xoing Di is the warlord that conquered China and other Asian countries, but it is never made clear whether its a person or the name of the faction warring against the United States or why they are doing it in the first place. It makes the whole book feel incomplete, or the extremely likely scenario that it is being left for a sequel. This is a habit that modern writers need to get out of as every book should be able to stand on its own. Have we learned nothing from J.K. Rowling?
But perhaps that works in the book’s favor…sometimes the writer’s get lost in their own canons and it can confuse the readers as well. Perhaps the story did not really need a fully realized villain. By fully realized, Ri Xoing Di is more like Sauron from Lord of Rings, more of a force than an true character. The red drones are the instruments of its will but we never see the true face of the master. This can create more drama on the part of the protagonist as we really get to know them as they overcome this challenge.
Final Verdict: Breaking Sky is a fun, action movie style of book but not much else. Good for what it offered.
Three out of Five Stars
****
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