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!