This one was not for me, and I can't recommend it. Disappointed.

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC for review.

This is one of those books that simulates being a successful story well enough to be mistaken for one at a distance of 500 yards.

The closer you get, though, the more you realize that something is just <i>off</i>. It's just a scaffolding of halfhearted attempts at worldbuilding mixed with cartoonishly ridiculous spy-movie character archetypes. Completely soulless, possibly an abomination.

Regards to Inkshares and NetGalley for providing me with the advanced copy in exchange of my honest review.

DNF@32%

I rarely DNF books and there is a reason for that: I want to give a book a chance each time, but sometimes it's too much even for me.
I was promised a sci-fi, but this is certainly not one in my books. You can't just give humans some weird names, change their skin/hair colors a little bit, throw them on a planet, and call them aliens!
That's not a good world-building, not even a lazy one. Overmore, the writing did nothing to help this. It's flat and unchallenging, making the story even blander.
After this absolute catastrophe of world-building, I hope that the characters were interesting enough for me to continue, but nope. Zeemat has no personality whatsoever besides being gentle and knowing how to paint. His crewmates have no presence except to give Zeemat some boring comments and don't even get me started on the people on Earth. They were described as if they were from a James Bond movie.

Overall, a huge pain to get through. Maybe someone will like it, but I certainly didn't.

This was so painful to read. I struggled with the absolute lack of creativity and world building when it came to this Torkiyan society. You can't just give human's funky names and call them aliens - that is lazy writing and lazy scifi. I would not recommend this to anyone.

I appreciate the publisher allowing me to read this book. This book hooked me from the beginning and I couldn't put it down until finished.