Book Review: Fate (The Legacy #1) by G.G. Atcheson

Fate by G.G. Atcheson

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

*I received a digital copy of this book from the author in exchange for an honest review*


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AMAZON | BOOK DEPOSITORY

There were times when I read the blurb of a book and thought I’d enjoy it only to find out later that I didn’t quite enjoy it. It wasn’t because the book was horrible or what. In fact, I rarely hate a book in my life (I could count with my fingers just how many books I’ve read that I really hate). It was usually because I couldn’t get into the story; because the book apparently didn’t work for me or maybe wasn’t my cup of tea.

That was what happened with me and Fate.

Fate by G.G. Atcheson is a crossover of fantasy genres between paranormal and sci-fi. Please note that I’m a big fan of sci-fi books and other times I enjoyed paranormal ones as well. I was surprised that Fate blended both genres into one tale and it’s really a sad truth that it didn’t work quite well for me. Believe me when I say that I wanted so much to love this book. I even listed below everything I loved about this book and those parts actually made me enjoy reading it. We’ll get there in a bit.

Lutnalind Zhendar Xavelk didn’t know that his latest mission would bring him into a long torturous journey in some foreign planet light years away from her home planet, Xhartan. When his spaceship crashed in the woods somewhere on Earth, LX went with name Alex going around the crashed area to find out where he was exactly. Trained as navigator for million years, Alex was expected to fix the ship and find a way to survive on his own while at the same time keep an honor of his pledge to his people.

But fate brought him to meet Mellie, local inhabitant who emanated different aura from other humans he ever encountered on Earth. Unlike with humans, Alex couldn’t sense her coming near him. And that’s only the first strange things about her. While trying to figure out what kind of creature she and her friends were, Alex had to hide his true identity and play pretend as one of them. He later realized that Mellie was a vampire yet she was a sweet girl and she welcomed him warmly even though some of her friends clearly resented his existence among them.

As Alex found himself got tangled with his feeling for Mellie, he was soon followed by several other problems coming his way. With human’s wanting to capture him, Alex had to juggle running from the authorities and keeping his new friends safe. Alex realized he became emotionally too attached with his new friends and Earth and it surely wouldn’t do him any good. Moreover with human’s false judgment upon his appearance on Earth when truth was it was the reserve. With it came the risk of crossing his pledge right in front of his eyes. Now Alex was left with options whether he should care about Mellie and the planet she lived in or stay true to his oath as Lutnalind. And the stake? Would he able to come home after all?

I’m going to put two lists of what I felt about this book. One for things I liked and the other one for things I didn’t like. I’ll go with the later first.

What I didn’t like

- Maybe I shouldn’t consider this point as ‘things I didn’t like’ because it’s more like it just didn’t work for me. I said this before, I loved sci-fi so freaking much and I enjoyed paranormal story a lot sometimes but the idea of combining both genres took me by surprise. Some people might find this worked for them but I’m sorry but I personally thought it was far beyond make sense. I didn’t say this combination was bad, really. It’s just because sci-fi was already one big world, one big fantasy world. And paranormal was another big world. And they went on real different paths. Combining two very different characteristically world wasn’t an easy deal. And in this book, it was combined with human world making it three different worlds on the same plate. This was not what I felt personally about Fate. Generally speaking, if there would be any book playing with this kind of combination in the future, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t pick it up, whoever the authors might be. Still, I appreciated Ms. Atcheson to work with this newly fresh idea and bravely put it into a series. It’s a first, and it’s a big deal, and a lot of people thought this was genius, so I guess she’d succeeded.

- The character Mellie was not quite developed I must say. I couldn’t comprehend her personality. Maybe because this book was basically told in Alex’s POV and he didn’t think much of her personality than he thought of his feeling for her. Also the scenes involving her didn’t say much about her characteristics. It just consisted of her crying over Alex, her confessing her undying love for Alex, and things like that. Thus, I found her character was distant and that’s one minus point for me.

- The romance between Alex and Mellie was so instant. I felt like it lacked of chemistry. Maybe it was partly because of my issue with the crossover genre leading to my not-quite-good opinion of paranormal creature paired with extraterrestrial being. Their romance didn’t quite touch my heart, really.

What I liked

- The sci-fi parts. I loved the technical parts a lot. I loved how the author described how the spaceship worked, how the repairing occurred, I loved just everything describing Alex’s planet, its culture, and all. I loved all the details she put into this section.

- I loved character Alex who put a high loyalty on his people back in Xhartan. He also tried hard to stay true to his original peaceful personality and how he always tried to avoid killing people no matter innocent or not.

- The funny scenes! Gosh, I laughed a lot reading Alex’s confusion in speaking human’s language. It’s just too funny how he struggled with choosing the right form of contractions to use most of the time. This was a few lines where I swear I lost control of my laugh.

“Well, when you said… he’t… hmm no”, I frowned and shook my head.

That did not sound right.

“He’st…”

No, not better.

After rubbing the back of my neck, I tried one more time, “Hem’st?” 

Tell me this didn’t crack you up! He was trying to form a contraction of ‘he must’… Lololol!

- I liked that the author opted to put epilogue in this book. Most authors wouldn’t do that for the first book of a series. It somehow made the cliffhanger more bearable.

And that’s how I felt about this book. I’m thinking that maybe if this book was told in a whole different circumstance (a.k.a. under one particular genre, sci-fi maybe), I’d love this book. But it wasn’t, so this time I had to settle with 3 stars. It’s just me, though.

Love, read, and review,

Cynthia D.