Wow! I am hooked! Can hardly wait for the other two books!!

O......M....G........ If you buy one book this year this is the one to buy. Amazing!!!! How do you fight, but keep sight of yourself? To do what's right, and still win when stakes are high? The author has kept me up all night and I loved the book so much!!!! Without a doubt I can recommend this book to any age and I know they will not be able to put it down. This book is just a book to truly get excited about and every teenage kid should be blessed with a parent or teacher who puts this in their hands. It has such a message!!!!

I opened this ARC yesterday to glance at it (I have other books going) and absolutely fell into it. And a debut? What a stunning book!

I was going to avoid it, as I am tired of teenage gladiatorial books with sloppy worldbuilding that only exists to throw the teens into a pit to fight themselves bloody (between swooning and angsting over their Lurve Triangle) but I stumbled on a reference to there being only one white character in this book, and I had to read it.

I am so glad I did. Make no mistake, the tension-line is at maximum overdrive, because the competition is there, hoo boy is it there. But Reintgen has put together a fascinating world that promises all kinds of layers behind the mega corporation Babel, who funds this trip to a new planet called Eden, where a mysterious substance called nyxia is being mined. But it's being controlled by indigenous people who slaughtered the adults and protected the children in the initial exploration party.

So many interesting questions lie outside, to be answered in subsequent volumes, meanwhile this one concerns Emmet, a black kid from Detroit, trying to find his place among the other nine teens on their ship: while they travel to Eden, the ten embark on a super intense training regimen that is meant to eliminate two from the ten.

What I found exceptionally good was how Emmet struggles not only to be the best, but to define what that best is. He's all the conflicts of human nature wrapped up in one complex kid: his parents, he knows, define the best as being a good man, not merely a physically strong or lethal one. And it is not clear that the adults training and watching over these kids want the same thing.

Reintgen does a terrific job with the female characters. They are complex, fascinating, frightening, wonderful. All the characters are distinct, and watching how they develop is as absorbing as the steadily heightening threats of the training.

The writing is so much better than that in the usual run of YA gladiatorial novels--taut, vivid, intelligent, insightful, heartbreaking as well as exhilarating, and only *one spelling mistake* (free reign instead of free rein) and no grammar oopses. Rare!

Meanwhile there's the nyxia itself. What is that stuff?

I look forward to finding out; meantime this is one of my best reads of the year so far.

This book was amazing. There was so many twists and turns. Its like suicide squad met star wars met hunger games. I loved all the characters and the relationships they had with eachother. I feel like the author could've gone morw in depth with the other character's stories, and the ending seemed a little too rushed. But besides that it is a great book I highly recommend.

I love the world, the characters, & the plots of the story. I can't wait for book 2 to come out now cuz there was craziness at the end like WOW Babel Communications is WILD. I wanna know who are the wizard behind the curtains!! I loooove Emmet I love that he'll never forget Kaya & now he has Morning. There was sooo many twists in this book that I never saw coming & I just had to keep reading to know what happened next. I'm still worried about the Nyxia & all the rest of story as too why & how Babel needs the stuff. I know we'LL see more of the Adamites species in book 2 so I can't wait for that & the other outcomes with Emmett & the others!