I am a sucker for an amazing cover and this book has an amazing cover. Have i read the Les Mis no but i did read the lunar chronicles. I not sure if i can say that it a retelling of les mis but i do see the connection to lunar chronicles.

I choose to read this on a weekend when my family and job obligations would be low. Why cause i knew that i would devour this book and having to stop and take care of something was not on my agenda. Did i achieve my goal of reading it in a weekend yes yes i did. I loved it every page, every plot twist, every delicious secret that was uncovered.

This is a long book and sometimes i am leery of long books especially from authors i know nothing about. Why cause i worried i won’t like it and spent my money on a monster book, worried that the author are not gonna suck me in the way someone i know does, and most of all worried i like most of it but the ending will let me down. Did any of that happen no, this book will suck you in, the author will not drop the story and bore you to death and best of all the ending will leave you longing for the next one.

This book does everything i want in a good book, strong characters, action that i not sure how will play out and you get to see the story from all sides as it told in each character voice throughout the book. If your a fan of lunar chronicles i can say for sure you like this book. Pick it up give yourself a bit of time and dive in. See you in march of 2020 when book two comes out.

To preface this review, I've never read the original novel by Victor Hugo. I've only seen the musical movie with Amanda Seyfried and Anne Hatheway. I also haven't read the comp series The Lunar Chronicles.

That being said, I enjoyed this retelling a lot! It was related enough to the storyline, but it also did a lot of new things.

Something I found most interesting about the novel was Chatine! She was the driving force behind much of the novel, and she was morally ambiguous. This grey area made you wonder how you could trust her, but she was very compelling as a character overall.

The two other main characters could have been developed a little more. They were annoying and, at times, flat characters. I wish I had gotten to know them better, but their plots weren't as interesting as Chatine.

Overall, the writing was fabulous. It's not going to be the most fast paced in the beginning, but once you get into it this is riveting!

I could not get into this story. I felt that this dystopian premise has been done so many times, and while there were some interesting twists, I don't think i'll pick up the second book in the series.

A retelling of Les Mis with a sci-fi twist is a unique and compelling idea, however, this one missed the mark. It was slow and a bit disjointed, and I wasn't excited to continue picking this one up.

This high-concept novel (Les Mis in space?) is a must read for fans of Victor Hugo's classic and space-set series such as These Broken Stars and Aurora Burning. Reimaginings can be hit or miss-but I think if you keep in mind that this was inspired by Les Mis rather than rely on it being a complete retelling, you'll be in good shape. Be prepared for a love triangle too. But all in all, I think this is a great, exciting novel by two talented authors, worthy of a read for any SFF fan.

I was intrigued with the description of the book and was so looking forward to reading it. The first few chapters had me hooked but then I started to lose interest in certain chapters. And I think one character was just not interesting like at all I found her so boring and those chapters just took me longer to get through. I'm sorry Allouette love your name but girlfriend your personality is lacking something. Other than that the plot was good so was the writing. Will I read the second book? Not sure yet.

Thank you to Netgalley for the free ebook in exchange for an honest review.

DNF. This book had tons of potential but none of it was realized. It was way too long and repetitive, and felt very predictable.

WOW! I'm blown away with this book! It is the kind that will stay with you for years to come. Excellent character development, engaging plot wonderful "other world" descriptions and outstanding overall quality. this book sets a high bar for quality.. I'm not big on following through with sequels, but I will be looking forward to reading the rest of this one.
This is a 'not to be missed' book!

DNF @ 11%

I tried. I really tried to read this one, but for some reason it just isn't holding my attention. I like when main characters are thieves. I like when characters are in disguise. I liked the atmosphere. The story... it just felt a little slow and nothing about the plot anymore felt interesting. Yet, there are so many things that should be interesting -- which is why the 3 star review.

I'll probably recommend this one to people who like drama and sci-fi.

I got approved for this book a month before the release date. Being new NetGalley, I was a junky and book reviewer and didn’t realize that I need to pace myself when requesting books. I seriously requested everything I thought was interesting. Sadly, because of it, I didn’t get to read a good amount of books, and this was one of them. I knew though, that I had to read it. A Les Mes retelling! Of course! I love the newest movie and could watch it and listen to the soundtrack all day. A few years ago I tried listening to the audiobook, which I loved the 8-9 chapters that I listened to, but it was such a huge book that I didn’t get around to finishing it. What I did listen to though was amazing. I plan on starting next year off by trying to finish it.

Anyways, back to this book, I recently got approved for the sequel which I knew I had to have. This put a fire under my butt to reading this one. I loved loved loved it and I loved all the characters. Being able to tie things together with the original book was really neat too. I won’t give anything away but every time I realized the similarities it made me so happy. The world is such an interesting one and I think that the authors did an amazing job tying everything together and making the 3 POVS merge.

First, we have Marcellus. He is an officer and the son of a traitor. He wants to be the best officer he can, but doubts start to make him rethink what he knows. Chatine is the thief. She has had a very hard life and only makes money by thieving. She wants to get out of the life she has so badly and ends up making a deal that could give her what she wants more than anything. Lastly, we have Alouette, the guardian. She has lived a very different life than both Marcellus and Chatine. Her job, along with others, is to protect the last surviving library in the world. For all these characters, they learn that everything is not at all as it seems.

I loved all three of these characters so much and cannot wait to see what’s in store for them in the next book! It comes out in a few days, not sure I’ll be able to finish it before the release day, but I will definitely start it by then. If you love Les Mes go and get this book now! You will love it!!!!

I really enjoyed this one. I'm such a sucker for a good fantasy.
And this book gave me just what I needed to really let myself get lost in the pages.

A 5 star read for sure for me

DNF. This book, while interesting, lost my attention at about 30%. I just couldn't keep going. I did purchase the hardcover in the hopes that I will be drawn back into the story but for now, I've set it aside. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to read.

I hard time with this book. It moved too slow and the characters were too shallowly drawn. Though the elements lifted from Les Miserables were interesting especially putting them into a out-of-planet setting, but in the end, it wasn't enough to keep me interested.

I was really excited for this book as it was a scifi retelling of Les Miserables which is one of my favourite classics ever. I went in with a lot of expectations but I was disappointed. I couldn’t connect to the characters or the plot and had to dnf the book at 30%. One of the main reasyis that I kept comparing it to the original and that worked against my enjoyment of the book. But if you like scifi and YA, then maybe you will like it.

I must admit, the first time I read this book I actually DNFed it about half way through because I just wasn’t that interested in it. I’m also not so familiar was Les Miserables so I ended up DNFing and never looked back. Fast forward to July and I realized that I was approved on Edelweiss as well as NetGalley for the title and now that I didn’t have a never ending pile of soon to be released books to read I decided to dive into this almost 600 page book again. Needless to say, I actually ended up really enjoying it and I am pretty excited about the next book in the series.

I want to talk about the world building first rather then characters because I actually found it quite interesting. The last days (The death of earth) the discovered planet of Laterre promised hope for those who were able to inhabit it. But now having been living on Laterre for five hundred years, society is separate by the extravagant higher class and then the lower class. The higher class lives under a dome where they see the sky and the beauty of the sun where the lower class lives under constant clouds and haven’t seen the sun in years. I found it quite interesting to see how one class was more superior then the other when they were essentially the same at the end of the day. I also really enjoyed the underground library that Aloutte lives in with the sisters, the library contains books that were smuggled from earth and hidden in a secret underground society that has swore their lives to protect them. Sky Without Stars contains in the end three different society classes that were all interesting and unique in thier own way.

Sky Without Stars is split up into three point of views: Chatine, Marcellus and Aloutte.

Chatine: Chatine is a cut throat, street savvy thief he dresses as a boy and goes by the alias of Theo. She is desperate to leave the slums and the planet of Laterre behind and to start over. She continues to steal objects from people in order to pay her passage to the new planet, but when the price becomes inflated and Chatine is running out of time. That is until she is given an interesting offer that will have her crossing paths with Marcellus.

Marcellus: Marcellus is the son of one of the biggest traitors in the history of Laterre. A bombing that his father initiated caused the deaths of hundreds and since then has has been locked away on a prison planet. Marcellus' point of view starts with him learning that his father is dead and he has to go to the morgue to identify his body. Marcellus is an officer of the government and is set to replace his grandfather. He is being groomed to be the perfect General, but Marcellus has one thing that the others don't. His compassion and humanity. When Marcellus and Theo (Chatine) cross paths and the on coming rebellion threatening to destroy the already fragile society. But Chatine has motives of her own.

Aluotte: Things start to get a little trickier when Aluotte comes into the picture. She is part of a sisterhood that protects the books from the old world and chronicles the history of life on Laterre. For 12 years Aluotte has never been above ground, until she spots an injured Marcellus and sneaks out to help him. Soon Aluotte learns things about her father and how he isn't who he says to be and soon Aluotte is on the run for her life. I will admit, she wasn't my favorite character. But she was essential to the plot.

I never expected the twists and turns that Sky Without Stars brings or how intertwined all three characters are. After some of the big revelations at the end of the novel, I am super excited to see where this series is going to go. The only down fall I had with this book was the romance, I felt like it really wasn't needed. I know this is a retelling so it is needed, but it felt weird and not all that natural to me. Plus Sky Without Stars only takes place over a course of a few days.

Overall I do highly recommend Sky Without Stars and I can't wait to see with this duo has in store for their readers and this group of characters.

Sky Without Stars is the first installment in co-authors Jessica Brody & Joanne Rendell's System Divine series. This sci-fi novel is billed as Les Misérables meets The Lunar Chronicles. 500 years before the story begins, a terrible catastrophe befell Earth. The authors don't give us a lot of details about the actual disaster, but we do know that much of the human race did not survive. However, there was a small group of people who traveled into space where they searched for a planet that could sustain human life and become their new home.

The planet they settled on is called Laterre, and for some time, it proved to be a peaceful place to live. When our story opens, life on Laterre is far less idyllic. Huge numbers of the planet's residents are starving in the streets, while a few very rich and powerful families live in luxury. Murmurs of revolution are beginning to sweep through the land, but no one seems to know how to get such a huge undertaking off the ground - although there seem to be plenty of people ready and willing to figure it out.

The three key characters are Chatine Renard, Marcellus Bonnefacon, and Alouette Taureau. This is a world of rags and riches, injustice and robots, revolution and secrets.

Chatine is a street-savvy thief who goes by the name of Theo who grew up in the slums. She has parents that nobody in their right mind would say are model citizens. In fact, they are criminals who don't share the wealth with Chatine. Even though Chatine is an accomplished thief, she dreams of bigger things and getting away from the planet that is slowly eating away at her soul. She will do anything to escape the brutal Regime, including spy on Marcellus, the grandson of the most powerful man on the planet. Chatine is the morally gray character and definitely the most interesting one in this novel who ends up with more than she bargained for.

Marcellus is the son of a notorious traitor and the grandson of a General who is beloved by nearly everybody in the First Estate who live in Bio Domes. After Marcellus uncovers a secret message from his father that leads him to a woman who was part of the last revolution nearly two decades before. Marcellus slowly finds himself conflicted when his grandfather puts him in an situation where he can't win. He needs to find the so called rebellion, and turn them in. When he starts to hear truths about the regime that he proudly serves, he finds himself entangled with not only Chatine, but Alouette as well since she has the ability to read the cryptic message that his father left behind.

Alouette lives in a secret underground refuge where she serves as one of the guardians for Laterre's only existing library. A library that isn't supposed to exist. Alouette has been living among the Sisterhood for most of her life. The sisters are protectors of the first world books and the keeper of the chronicles which has documented every event that has happened since leaving the First World. She has no memories of the before. She only knows the man she calls father has protected her and kept her safe. When someone close to Alouette is murdered, she is forced to leave her refuge and make sense of life out in the real world, and her appearance will set in motion a terrible series of events that could spell an end to civilization as Chatine, Marcellus, and Alouette have always known it.

Although I loved the characters, it is the stunning world building that will leave readers inspired to continue reading a monster of a book that covers 500 pages fairly quickly. I never got around to reading the book Les Misérables but one who hasn't can find this story entertaining with the twists, betrayals, romance, and surprises that you will find along the way. The authors are telling their own tale for sure. Writer's walk their own path to either success or failure. In this case, this is a success which will lead me to read the sequel whenever it is released.

This retelling of Les Miserables as a space opera, is fun and fascinating. Since PBS is also playing a new version of the classic drama, it was easy to see how the science fiction story incorporated the Hugo storyline into this YA novel. The characters are clearly drawn from the original book. Not only is there a thief who is expert at slipping in and out of dangerous places, but there’s also a girl who lives hidden away with the nuns but who longs for a peek at the outside world. The swashbuckling young hero of the plot has begun questioning the government’s stance as he is drawn in by the enigmatic girl who might be able to solve a mystery he’s pursuing.

This is the first in a series and in following the original novel, it’s clear there is much more drama to come. The setting is on Laterre, one of twelve planets settled when Earth was no longer was a viable habitat. This is a dystopian world with three strata making up the society. The First Estate rule, the Second Estate run everything and not surprisingly, the Third Estate are the abject poor who live in squalor. The world of the poor is bleak, gray and has no view of the stars. All this adds to the mood of a miserable existence.

There are three narrators. Chatine, the thief, lives by her wits and is driven by her survival instinct. She is sometimes forced to make decisions that have dire consequences for others. Marcellus is of the Second Estate and is a soldier on a mission to learn the answers to his quest. There may be one person who can help him but she is elusive. Alouette is protected by her hidden life but she is desperate to experience the outside world. The three collide and the story revolves around their actions during a time of unrest on Laterre.

Converting Hugo’s book into a science fiction tale is creative and exciting. There are some new factions added but most of the story adheres to the original. The characters are similar to the famous Eponine, Cosette and Marius. Javert’s character is a cyborg obsessed with maintaining law and order. It’s a perfect fit for someone who’s cold and calculating.

This first installment leaves plenty of action remaining for readers to want to see where Brody and Rendell move forward with the next book.

I read a book by Jessica Brody years ago and loved it, so thought I'd give this a try. It was really good. The characters and world building was great, and it was totally engaging.

This book is very well done! The world building is great, the characters are engaging, the social tension is real. My one problem, as an educator is that it is really really long which makes it harder for use in a class. Regardless, I think it will make a good book club choice, but it's appeal will definitely be to particular students.

A YA dystopian version of Les Misérables! I have never read the original, but this retelling -- set in the far future on a distant planet after humans have had to leave Earth That Was, so to speak -- does a very good job transposing many of its characters and plot beats insofar as I understand them, while managing to slot in a ton of sci-fi elements, such as cyborg policemen. Well done.

There are a few things that bothered me about this book, and unfortunately they also had largely to do with some of the choices the authors made in an attempt to hew closely to the source material. Some of the plot devices and several of the character interactions are quite cringeworthy. For example, romance is introduced in very clunky ways, including a triangle and some insta-love... which come from Les Mis, but could easily have been excluded here. Why introduce het romance at all, when one could choose to go with interesting friendships or queer subtext instead? (Although the latter would perhaps be too much to ask from a book in which the presence or absence of long hair on a girl seems to be a good indicator of gender, to the point where Chatine, masquerading full-time as a boy called Theo but growing our her hair in order to sell it... simply needs to hide the length in a bun under a hood... which seems like a really fragile idea... but I digress...)

Also clunky are moments such as the part when the General asks Chatine (which is a really terrible name!) to spy on his officer grandson Marcellus because Marcellus trusts her... after they met once, just one day prior, for like a hot minute. But, as the three main YA characters also employ a LOT of YA tropes -- Chatine the streetwise, crossdressing thief girl; Marcellus the dreamboaty upright citizen boy who meets a girl (or two) and slowly learns the truth about the faulty regime he's been part of; Alouette the sheltered girl who is secretly trained as a stealth weapon of some sort -- it's not surprising that the plot would employ tropes too. The good news is that the plot and the characters also contain interesting details that are unique to this book, and that the whole thing is pretty well written! Chatine is the most interesting and developed, but that could be in part because I tend to enjoy the streetwise, crossdressing thief girl trope. Still hate her name though. (Seriously, it is a made-up, French-sounding word meant to mean "little cat"!)

The other main problem that I had and which derived from the source material, was with the way the French language was used. Rather than just having characters with French names and a planet called Laterre, etc., French words -- primarily but not always French/English cognates (such as "stupide" and "plastique") -- were used throughout this English-language book, somewhat arbitrarily. That is, why use certain words in this way but not others? Obviously, there are plenty of English-language books set in, say, France but written in English that might use certain French terms when no English equivalent will do, but I've never seen it done in quite this way, and I did not like it. It tended to kick me out of the story. I don't recall any sensical worldbuilding that would explain it. Though the planets in this star system (the "System Divine" of the series title) ostensibly represent different countries and there's mention made of a past war with Albion (i.e., England), there's no context for the language of Laterre to have been changed to, like, English-with-French-twists after interplanetary colonization or something. Laterre is established as having always been French from its original human colonization, though they may have been politically controlled by Albion at one point. To sum up: the French words were used for French color to remind readers that this is Les Mis.

To sum up, I had some problems, but overall I enjoyed this book and will most likely read the next installment when it comes out. I would recommend it to YA fans, and to anyone who likes unusual retellings. And yes, this book is rather to Les Mis what Cinder is to Cinderella!