Review: Crimson Ash by Haley Sulich

Title: Crimson Ash

Author: Haley Sulich

Series: Stand-alone

Genre: Dystopia/YA/Sci-fi

Publisher: Write Plan

Publication Date: May 10th, 2018

Edition: Kindle Edition, 317 pages

Source: NetGalley

Purchase/Pre-Order: Amazon US | Barnes & Noble | Book Depository | BAM

Synopsis:

You may live as a soldier or face death. Choose wisely.

   Solanine Lucille wants her little sister back. Eight years ago, the government kidnapped her sister Ember, stole her memories, and transformed her into a soldier. But Solanine refuses to give up. Now that she and her fiancé have located the leader of a rebel group, she believes she can finally bring Ember home. But then the soldiers raid the rebels, killing her fiancé and leaving Solanine alone with her demons and all the weapons needed for revenge. 

   After raiding a rebel camp, sixteen-year-old Ember doesn’t understand why killing some boy bothers her. She’s a soldier—she has killed hundreds of people without remorse. But after she fails a mission, the rebels hold her hostage and restore her memories. Ember recognizes her sister among the rebels and realizes the boy she killed was Solanine’s fiancé. 

Ember knows she can’t hide the truth forever, but Solanine has secrets too. 

   As their worlds clash, the two sisters must decide if their relationship is worth fighting for. And one wrong move could destroy everything—and everyone—in their path.

*************

For a standalone, there was a severe lacking in explanation and backstory.

The first chapter was great, everything else after was mediocre. There was a switching of tense between narration Ember and Solanine, and I don't like it when books do that, pick one and stick with it. There was nothing that really stood out to me in this book. Aside from the switching of tense, the book as fairly well written, grammar was good, sentence structure, all those things you expect from any writing were fine.

But I couldn't really connect to any of the characters. The chapters were really short, like 2-3 pages, not really giving me time with either character long enough for me to form any kind of connection. Solanine is told in third-person, and Ember is told in first-person as she is mostly talking to herself, in her mind, I think. I started skimming pretty early on, because of that lack of connection and all. I never really got a good enough feel of what the goal this new government had, again skimming I could have very well missed it entirely, but the world didn't completely make sense either. 

I feel like I should have read more reviews before requesting this book. For a book that's not out for another couple of months, this book has a decent amount of good reviews. I should have read more of those not so high praising reviews. 

The largest problem this book has, in my opinion, is that it's dull. Writing a standalone book requires more finesse than this book was given. It reads like a sequel, missing those key moments of worldbuilding, the loss of Solanine's family, the capture of her sister Ember, meeting Quill. All these little things we don't see happen, we are told they happened and are expected to have an emotional connection to those events.

Lack of worldbuilding, connection to characters, and often dull dialog kept me from enjoying this book as much as I wanted to.