ARC Review – Victories Greater than Death

From Goodreads:

Outsmart Your Enemies. Outrun the Galaxy.

Tina never worries about being ‘ordinary’—she doesn’t have to, since she’s known practically forever that she’s not just Tina Mains, average teenager and beloved daughter. She’s also the keeper of an interplanetary rescue beacon, and one day soon, it’s going to activate, and then her dreams of saving all the worlds and adventuring among the stars will finally be possible. Tina’s legacy, after all, is intergalactic—she is the hidden clone of a famed alien hero, left on Earth disguised as a human to give the universe another chance to defeat a terrible evil.

But when the beacon activates, it turns out that Tina’s destiny isn’t quite what she expected. Things are far more dangerous than she ever assumed. Luckily, Tina is surrounded by a crew she can trust, and her best friend Rachel, and she is still determined to save all the worlds. But first she’ll have to save herself.

Buckle up your seatbelt for this thrilling sci-fi adventure set against an intergalactic war from international bestselling author Charlie Jane Anders.

This is such a fun book! Such a fast-paced romp across space that just sweeps you the galaxy with a rag-tag found family. The writing style is really engaging. I particularly loved the various call and response greetings of the Royal fleet, they had a real humour and slight pragmatism to them that I really enjoyed. There was a real license to be creative with the universe and I think Anders really built something fun, exciting and beautiful.

While the main character’s ARC is a little lack lustre, essentially boiling down to learning not to try am please everyone’s inflated expectations of you, the side arc, universe building and relationships within the book were really entertaining. I loved the normalization of asking to physically interact with another being that wasn’t seen as ‘alien’ but also perpetuated by the human characters too. I love a good found family and this one is just filled with such awesome characters. There is a subtly to the diversity, which is beautiful. The diversity of characters is there all the humans from different countries, ethnic backgrounds, sexualities, neurodiversity, all communicating in there own languages relying on translators (that don’t always work -due to slang) to communicate. Then you have the Alien species which run wild in descriptions of all kinds. Yet it doesn’t feel forced or like a tick box exercise that some YA books can feel like. These characters have dimension to them and the collection of them into this crowd feels natural.

The book itself can get a little info-dumpy with its worldbuilding which is a little disappointing as at times it turns the main character, and narrator, into a bit of a walking talking Wikipedia (which the book even jokes about), but that worldbuilding is interesting, creative and relevant to the story. So while a little off putting at times can be forgiven once you are immersed in the story.

This is a light and bubbly, feel-good space opera that just leave you with that fuzzy warm feeling of reading a fun adventure. Its about finding yourself, finding a place to belong and owning who you are, all while defeating evil space villains on a tin can of a space ship. Its really fun. I will definitely continue with this series.