Review: PROJECT EMERGENCE by Jamie Zakian

YA Sci-Fi

Available March 14, 2017

project-emergence

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I received an ARC from the publisher in exchange for an unbiased review.

I love Ms. Zakian’s work, that’s no secret, her Ashby Holler series is one of my all time favorite sets of books.

As for Project Emergence, even though it’s coming out after the Ashby series, I have a feeling it’s an earlier work. It isn’t as nuanced as her other books but that fits the story line quite well.

One of Ms. Zakian’s gifts in writing YA is that she writes teens like they really are. It’s not adult thought patterns put into supposedly teenaged heads like a lot of the YA on the market.

Project Emergence is an easy, fast read and I think it’s a great set-up story for what I feel will be a fascinating book two.

Unfortunately, I caught a number of editing errors, so feel it could’ve been edited more thoroughly, but that’s not on the author. No author can ever can catch everything in their own work, we become blind to our own words. Just part of the business of writing. You need external editors and Project Emergence needed one. Regardless of that, it’s quite a fun read with a light, enjoyable plot.

I most strongly identified with Sabrina in the book. The young adult characters are written in a way that evokes the feeling of being a youth, which is exactly what one wants when writing YA. I think teenagers and new adults are going to enjoy the story quite a bit.

The two different styles of voice in the book are each unique and well defined (Sabrina/Adult, the YA voices, all are exactly as they should be, and it’s a hard thing for an author to do, to have two such different voices in one book.)

The characters and world definitely have promise, and I look forward to book two.

Scores:

Readability 4/5: Fast paced, not complex. A light, easy read.

Arcs 4/5: This is the beginning of a series, so it has both character and story Arc and series Arc. It’s a satisfying ‘for now’ conclusion while leaving enough open that I want to read the next book.

Craft 3/5: Really needed an editor to take a second or third read of it. Several punctuation errors, (missing commas) but that’s not something that should affect reading pleasure for none writers/editors.

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