Friday, July 18, 2014

Review: Earth Star

Earth Star by Janet Edwards
Earth Girl #2
Publisher: Pyr
Release Date: January 1st, 2013
Source: Library
Date Read: 7/11/14 to 7/13/14
285 Pages
Rating: 

Only She Can Save the World.

Eighteen-year-old Jarra has a lot to prove. After being awarded one of the military's highest honors for her role in a daring rescue attempt, Jarra finds herself - and her Ape status - in the spotlight. Jarra is one of the unlucky few born with an immune system that cannot survive on other planets. Derided as an "ape"- a "throwback" - by the rest of the universe, Jarra is on a mission to prove that Earth Girls are just as good as anyone else.

Except now the planet she loves is under threat by what could be humanity's first ever alien contact. Jarra's bravery - and specialist knowledge - will once again be at the center of the maelstrom, but will the rest of the universe consider Earth worth fighting for?

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After recently finishing Earth Girl, I saw that my library also had the second installment for it. And since I really did like the first book, I wanted to give this one a try as well! Sadly, it didn't exactly go very well for me. (And here ends my streak for good books)

First let me sum up the first book, Earth Girl (review here). In the future, there's the technology to teleport to any planet that's been colonized. However, not everyone can just portal off-world. Some, called the Handicapped, apes, neans, are looked down upon for their inability to leave Earth, due to their poor immune system. Enter Jarra, a Handicapped that wishes to prove to everyone that she's better than them. By attending a university History class with students from other planets, creating a fake identity, she plans to fool everyone into thinking that she's perfectly normal. Until she starts believing her own lies. And also making friends. 

Now, let me sum up this second book here, Earth Star. In one word. 

ALIENS. 


Lol it's Sheldon the Alien

Actually, this is inaccurate, because even though the blurb clearly points to ALIENS, we never really see any. 

Basically, after the whole lying fiasco, Jarra encounters a new obstacle. And that is the huge round UFO floating above Earth. Yep, it happened! Humans have encountered ALIENS! Though the Military is keeping it under wraps, because you know, people would freak out if ALIENS just came out of no where. 

So anyways, Jarra and her boyfriend, Fian, are "mysteriously" recruited for the Alien programme, in other words, they're now Military. And one would think, wow REAL ALIENS, how is Jarra going to deal with this? She's only a student! Well, I was highly disappointed with the answers the book gave me. Here, I even drew a graph of how the story went (no spoilers, I promise).
As you can see, Earth Star had a couple of problems. Let's start with the most obvious one. First, most of it is basically just "telling". Right when I started reading, Jarra began telling us about how her meeting with Fian's parents went, through her best friend, Issette. Honestly, I would rather be shown this scene, only because I was actually looking forward to it when I finished the previous book. This continues to be a problem throughout, all mostly by dialogues, which mainly just dish out more information.

Second, why is Jarra just handed everything? I understood why it happened in the first book, but now? It's just very repetitive. Plus, Jarra shouldn't know about all the things that she actually knows about. And then when she feels nervous, she does fine. Honestly, this girl can't do anything wrong, unless when it's out of control. And even then she's fine.


Again, Fian is just there as a boyfriend. I still don't know what his other characteristics are, other than he is a "very naughty Deltan boy", or somewhere only the lines of.

And then, most of the stuff goes over my head. Like honestly, I did understand the digsite terminology in the first book, but now there's just WAY more. I either didn't pay attention to the explanations, or I just skimmed through it because it was way too boring. The only reason I stuck through with it, is because I actually wanted to know about the aliens, and whether we would meet them. But nope, even though I have to wait until the third book.

Ok, now for some positive things. I loved how some things that were mentioned was due to our time period. For example, a band was formed, and they performed a "gig" during a party. Apparently they don't have rock and roll music anymore in the future, which makes sense since most of that knowledge was lost.

Also, CHEESE FLUFFLE! What is cheese fluffle?? I don't know! But I really want to try it. It just sounds so fun and fluffy! Maybe it's fluffy cheese??????? This is constantly mentioned as one of the meals Jarra adores, haha.

And if this counts for anything, I know everything about the Earth Girl world, including all the slang words, such as amaz, nardle (you're such a nardle Jarra!), nuke (because.....why? It's the equivalent of the f-word), and zan. AND HAHAHAHA BUTT IS CONSIDER SUPER INAPPROPRIATE! You can only say "legs" (Wow, he has nice legs), which I think still means butt, BUT STILL. Imagine never being able to say "butts" again. That would be a very sad life.

Sorry for the long review/rant though. I've seen a couple of positive reviews on Goodreads, so if you're a sci-fi fan, maybe you should still check this series out? Don't let my review change your mind haha!

9 comments:

  1. This series(trilogy?) really intrigues me but it sounds like it might suffer from second book syndrome. Also yes it would definitely be a sad sad world if you could never say butt again. =)

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    1. Oh man never being able to say "butt" again would be horrible. Also, I think this trilogy would definitely be better if it wasn't written in Jarra's POV or in this way in general. It would have had so much potential otherwise.

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  2. If there's anything that your review highlighted, it's how confusing it was! I mean why did it highlight aliens and not even talk about them much? Why are they fluffing around doing other stuff and not focusing on the aliens? Huh? Great review Val!

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    1. Thanks Jeann! Honestly it only talked about what to do with the aliens, but other than repeating the threat levels over and over again, I didn't get much out of it. I really want to know what's going to happen in the next book, but if nothing happens again, I won't be very happy about it

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  3. HAHAHA, nice excitement graph you got there. xD That aside, though, I'm so disappointed that Earth Star sucked. It's horrible when a blurb advertises something about a book, yet we don't see (or barely see) any of that in the story itself. I guess the only good thing this book had going was that at least it wasn't all boring, you know? Otherwise then it would have been REALLY awful to read.

    "Honestly, this girl can't do anything wrong, unless when it's out of control. And even then she's fine." -- Sounds like a case of the author trying to take the easy way out by making everything convenient. What's the point, then?! You might as well write a one-chapter book info-dumping everything onto the reader and then dedicating two sentences where the main character kicks ass because she can't do anything wrong. Geez. And boo for the romance. I would've expected Fian to develop more as a character, too, considering that this is the sequel and his and Jarra's relationship had already been established in the last book.

    OMG, I'm up to try anything cheese. I love cheese. CHEESE IS AMAZING. And lollll, I actually laughed out loud when I read that "butt" is an inappropriate word. I don't think I'll be able to take this series seriously with all those ridiculous words. Nuke is the equivalent to the f-word? That's just dumb. Along with the whole butt thing. I'm starting to dread reading Earth Girl now...

    Sorry this didn't work out for you, Val, but I doubt anyone would've liked this sequel much, based on your review! Maybe I'll just read the first book and leave it at that. :P

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    1. YES Thanks Megan I worked REALLY HARD on that graph ahaha. I know, I wish this book did a lot more showing than telling, but I think that was supposed to be the case. I think the author wanted it to be something like "Jarra's journal", with all her thoughts. But, augh it just didn't work for me and I feel bad about it.

      And jeez Jarra was just, she could do everything while not being in control. And boy was it not interesting at all.....

      CHHHHEEEEESEEEE :D

      I'm hoping that the next book will be slightly better. But def just read the first one! It's still a little info-dumpy though

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  4. SEE THIS IS EXACTLY MY PROBLEM WITH THIS BOOK. I TOLD YOU!!! I TOOOOOLD YOU!!! Lol. I love it when I'm proven correct :P Haha

    But yeah, I hated the telling style here. It didn't concern me that much in the first book, but this one was just so tiring. AND JARRA! Jarra being SO perfect, never being able to do anything wrong, Jarra who's already so young but for some reason is the ONLY one who can do something about the obstacles, surpassing even the bloody military! x_x The ridiculousness of her awesomeness was what REAAALLY turned me off to be honest...

    But at least you had positive things to say about it! I don't think I had any to be honest... lol!

    Faye at The Social Potato

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    1. I KNOW YOU'RE ALWAYS RIGHT FAYE! HAHA

      Yeah because of this book, now I wonder whether I actually liked Earth Girl or not. Like didn't it have the same info dumpyness as the sequel? I don't knowwww. I mean Jarra was awesome, and is still awesome. And it's tiring. I think what made this book worse is that really nothing happened. Like sure, aliens, but eh.

      I think I'll still read the third book, but I'll read it reluctantly. I have a thing about finishing things...

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  5. Haha, I love your review :D I never got the 'legs' thing in Earth Girl either... why is 'butt' now a rude word >.> SO MUCH UNEXPLAINED STUFF.

    There's more telling rather than showing? Ughhhh...

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