The Bookworm's Feast

 Release Date: December 2013
 Publisher: 47 North
 Genre: Fantasy, Sci-Fi, YA, Romance
 Page Count: 297
 Goodreads
 Rating: ★★★★☆  

“Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine. I’m used to holding on to nothing as tight as I can.”

Meet Kricket Hollowell. A 17 year old orphan who’s been dodging foster care for the past few years, counting down the days until she’s 18 and can stop running. It is from her view that we follow this story.

Queue Trey and Kyon – they’ve come from her home planet to take her back, so she can pay for her “crimes” of being on Earth. It turns out she isn’t human – she’d always known she was different, but not that she was quite so different.

“You cannot thrive under the wrong stars, Kricket,” Trey says in a calm, soothing voice. “The stars here are in opposition to you . . . can’t you feel it? You are foreign to them. You have no ancestry here—no lineage. Let us take you home.”

Now, I didn’t think I was going to give this as high a rating as I did. I didn’t overly enjoy this book at the beginning. But, around halfway, it had utterly sunk its claws into me.

Trey and Kyon are from opposing factions – the driver for the book. Each wants her for their own ends, and there is war and discontent brewing between them. I’m not going to talk too much about storyline and characters as it’s a short book, and I don’t want to spoil it for anyone who reads this and then decides they’d like to give it a go.

Kricket is feisty with fantastic survival skills from her years on the run. Although she did grate on me at the beginning, she’s a very lovable character – and I adore how she manages to hold her own in the various circumstances she faces as the story evolves.

Amy definitely builds up a sense that you’re not on Earth, despite the characters obviously being humanoid if Kricket has managed to blend in on Earth (at least enough). We encounter strange flora and fauna, see some of their customs, and get a little sense of their hierarchy and civilisation set-up.

The language barrier is quickly cleared up via an implant Kricket is given, but there’s still things to overcome – it’s not all, yes they’ll understand everything now. There’s things they call into question as they don’t have words for it, and things Kricket has to call into question as they didn’t exist on Earth. Even though it’s a simple thing, I absolutely love this – I’ve read too many things where you can easily forget you’re reading a story not set on Earth.

This is the first in a series, and I’m definitely picking up the next soon!