Trigger warnings: Rosiee has kindly put together a list of warnings on her website: http://www.rosieethor.com/tarnished-are-the-stars-content-warnings/
Synopsis: A secret beats inside Anna Thatcher's chest: an illegal clockwork heart. Anna works cog by cog -- donning the moniker Technician -- to supply black market medical technology to the sick and injured, against the Commissioner's tyrannical laws.
Nathaniel Fremont, the Commissioner's son, has never had to fear the law. Determined to earn his father's respect, Nathaniel sets out to capture the Technician. But the more he learns about the outlaw, the more he questions whether his father's elusive affection is worth chasing at all.
Their game of cat and mouse takes an abrupt turn when Eliza, a skilled assassin and spy, arrives. Her mission is to learn the Commissioner's secrets at any cost -- even if it means betraying her own heart.
When these uneasy allies discover the most dangerous secret of all, they must work together despite their differences and put an end to a deadly epidemic -- before the Commissioner ends them first.
Review: I feel like this is going to be polarizing book. Tarnished are the Stars is a multi-perspective sci-fi novel. Anna is a girl who tries to help the sick with her mechanical devices. I heard this book featured an ace main character and I was afraid it was going to be Anna. She was sick as a child and had metal placed in her heart. I was afraid the girl who doesn't have a real heart was going to be the person who can't feel sexual/romantic attraction. Thankfully, this isn't the case. Anna still bothered me though. She is consumed by her role as the Technician and she can't see how it is negatively those around her. She also rejects learning how to perform surgery because of a mistake when she was younger. That's fair, but then she decides to perform surgery at the end of the book, and it somehow works out fine? As someone who has messed up in the past, and my anxiety latches onto those mistakes, I didn't like that she was suddenly able to perform life or death surgery on someone because of the power of love.
Nathaniel is the son of the Commissioner, and he is constantly trying to win approval from his father. I wanted to like Nathaniel, but I couldn't. I appreciated his struggle with not being attracted to anyone, but I felt like he was forgiven too quickly for killing a child. I'm curious to see how people who are physically disabled react to Nathan's role in i. As someone who has invisible illnesses, it is hard for me to say definitively that Nathan isn't redeemable.
Eliza was my favorite character at first, but then she fell into one of the character tropes I hate the most. She finds herself attracted to Anna, but she feels the need to belittle Anna every chance she gets. It's the same problem people point out about male characters constantly being mean to female love interests. Except this time it's female/female. That one thing killed Eliza's character for me. We also find out that she loved a girl before, but we don't get that much backstory. We find out the girl ran away, and Eliza stayed. That felt like a very surface level relationship, and I wish the queer community had a little bit more. On top of that, it seemed weird to me that Eliza told Nathaniel she was the queen's spy as soon as they met. She didn't have any real reason to trust him.
The story was really interesting to me. Anna is trying to find a way to help her people, Nathaniel will do anything for his father's approval, and Eliza wants to help her queen. I thought the world was neat, and I appreciated that this shows a future where humans ruin Earth, but I didn't feel like we got much resolution by the end of the story. Still, it felt very minimal and I wish there was more.
It started off promising, but ended as a disappointment.
3 howls
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