Review: Speed of Light

Author: Amber Kizer
Date of Publication: November 13 2012
Pages: 544
Source: Library ebook
Series: Fenestra #3

Fans will be thrilled with the final novel in the Meridian trilogy as the romance between Meridian and Tens heats up. And Juliet returns, but her obsessions leave her open to evil exploitation.

Meridian Sozu is a Fenestra, an angel infused human, destined to transition souls into the next world. Together with Tens Valdes, her soulmate and Protector, they've made a home in Indiana, making sure the dead safely enter the light and aren't stolen by the Dark, known as the Nocti. 

Upon rescuing Juliet Ambrose from her terrible childhood, Juliet has become vulnerable without her Protector and grasps at any hope to find her parents, even when it's offered by a proven Nocti, Ms. Asura. Juliet is now faced with the horrible choice between uncovering her past and having a future.

Meanwhile, time may be running out for the hundreds of thousands preparing for the festivities surrounding the Indianapolis 500 car race. As centuries of secrets are revealed, the battles will pit Light versus Dark. Not all with survive as Meridian, Tens, and Julie join forces to try to thwart a potential tragedy.

Review:

I deserve a medal for finishing this book. No seriously. Speed of Light was excruciatingly long with very little action and a serious case of overwriting.

The characters were stale. You couldn't really care about them because they were so clearly good that it was a little frustrating. Meridian's perspective was particularly boring. She was so sweet and seemed to have no personality beyond wanting to help everybody and being in love with Tens. Tens was perfect. He didn't screw up once. He never needed reassurance. He wasn't human, and I became increasingly apathetic over their relationship. They are in love, I get it. I don't need to be slammed with this fact over and over. I ended up skipping most of their unnecessary love scenes.

Speaking of unnecessary, I would say about 1/3 of this book should have been cut, and I'm being generous. The plot is crawling and so slow. Nothing happens. It's really badly written because so many scenes don't advance the story so that by the time you get to the end, I don't know why the ending is rushed and completely anticlimactic.

I always liked the mythology in the series, but this book failed it. It became too preachy and sweet. There was too much good versus evil and not enough why. I would have loved to know more about the inner psyche of a Nocti. And not like Ms. Asura. She was supposed to be scary, but she was the most pathetic villain ever. I didn't once fear her and so it made Juliet look a little weird to be so scared of someone like her. Her confrontations with the Fenestra were almost laughable because she was all "I'm a villain! WE WILL WIN!" And Meridian would say something cheesy like "Love is stronger than everything!"

You may wonder why I read this book? Well, Juliet was interesting in the beginning. By the end of the book I kind of tired of her. But just as my interest in her waned, a new character was introduced. Fara.

Fara is the only character I have any interest in by the end of Speed of Light, and that's because of one thing: she's Persian. Whoa! Diversity! How bad does YA need diversity? I read a whole 544 page book just because of one character who has the same heritage as me. Yeah, I'm Persian, and so Fara maybe interested me a lot more than she would others. It's just the cultural things I find interesting. I grew up with parents that were kinda lukewarm in sharing culture. I knew all about Nowruz and stuff, but I didn't know the stories behind it. That part was fascinating. The food part was cute too. Anyway, I connected with Fara and I have to applaud the author for successfully writing in some significant diversity.

Even with that though, the story was boring. I'm extremely disappointed with it. 1 star.

P.S. I just read that this isn't the end of the series. Interesting, because I thought it was. It even says "trilogy" in the synopsis. Either way, I'm done.


-P.E.


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