Review: Rush by Eve Silver
Author: Eve Silver
Genre: YA Adventure Sci-Fi
Publisher: Katherine Tegen Books
Length: 361 pages
Original Publishing Date: June 11, 2013
Series: The Game #1
Where I got it: Audiobook from the e-library
Links: Goodreads Amazon Author's Website
Synopsis from Goodreads:
So what’s the game now? This, or the life I used to know?
When Miki Jones is pulled from her life, pulled through time and space into some kind of game — her carefully controlled life spirals into chaos.
In the game, she and a team of other teens are sent on missions to eliminate the Drau, terrifying and beautiful alien creatures. There are no practice runs, no training, and no way out. Miki has only the guidance of secretive but maddeningly attractive team leader Jackson Tate, who says the game isn’t really a game, that what Miki and her new teammates do now determines their survival, and the survival of every other person on this planet. She laughs. He doesn’t. And then the game takes a deadly and terrifying turn.
Main characters: 1.5/5
Miki had the potential to be an intriguing and interesting main character, but she failed. Part of it was that she was intended to grow and become a stronger character, but I wasn't sold on it. Instead, she was weak, meek and fearful the entire book. She had these kickass kendo skills, but still needed someone to protect her and watch her all the time.
Jackson was purposefully an enigma, and a jerk. I really didn't see Miki's attraction to him, and thus found their relationship silly, contrived and unbelievable. Although Silver made strides attempting to characterize and humanize him toward the end, the relationship still reeked of instalove. Also, his whole "I'm a bad guy and you should stay away" thing reeked of Edward Cullen. Gag me.
Secondary characters: 2/5
I was doing okay with the secondary characters for a while at the beginning. Luka had the potential to be really cool and interesting, but he sort of faded out toward the end and didn't live up to his expectations. He was the almost third in an almost love triangle that just hit a weird in-between. Tyrone was non-existent. Miki's friends were jerks. But then, toward the end, Silver decides to hit us with a million new secondary characters who she doesn't describe any more than giving them names, and it just went downhill from there.
Writing style: 1/5
The action scenes in Rush were particularly problematic to me, and made the writing style jarring and slow. Silver's action scenes lack a quickness to the pacing and make it seem slow and boring. She uses excessive description and adds Miki's thoughts to an extreme, which slows down the pace and makes the action seem less like action and more like filler fluff.
My other big pet peeve with the writing style was the ridiculous influx of questions. I understand that Miki is intended to be curious and confused (I was confused as a reader), but the only way that information was conveyed was through Miki's relentless questions and one word, bare minimum answers. Literally, hundreds of questions. No information given any other way. Whole chapters filled with questions and answers, and no action. The info dump was too much.
Plot: 2/5
Yes, there were some interesting ideas here and it could have been something cool. However, it failed. Here's why: Silver had a lot of ideas that were really fascinating but it felt like she threw them all together with no motivation for why they were connected. For instance, why do the aliens use the format of the game? Silver attempted to explain it but it didn't logically make sense to me. It just seemed like Silver wanted to combine the "game" format with aliens because it was cool.
I was also a little disappointed in the way that the plot ended up turning. It lacked excitement and the mystery wasn't enough to keep me interested. We were jolted back and forth between the game and real life, but nothing kept me intrigued for very long, which was problematic since the book just kept dragging forward. How can such an exciting idea be so boring?
Ending: 1/5
Um, no. Not okay, Eve Silver. The level of cliffhanger was ridiculous and over the top. A 360 page novel is not a TV show!
Honestly, the ending was losing steam anyway and wasn't keeping my interest, even though it was essentially pure action, but that cliffhanger just did me in.
Best scene: The very beginning when Miki gets pulled in
Reminded Me Of: Ender's Game
Positives: Intriguing concept, Luka had some potential
Negatives: Miki, gross instalove, Jackson's weird "I'm so bad" mantra, writing style, the
Cover: Actually really pretty and cool. Too bad the rest of the book wasn't the same.
Verdict: A cool idea that flopped
Rating: 3.0 / 10 (2 stars)
Your Thoughts: Have you read it? What did you think? If you haven't, will you be adding it to your TBR list? Let me know!
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