Yes—it is time, Chrissy, for me to read your book.
Okay this isn’t actually a book about Chrissy Teigen; the girl on the cover just kind of looks like her. (I believe the main character is at least part Asian, so that makes sense.) The actual writer is a debut author named Lora Beth Johnson, and I have been SO excited to read this one since I first saw it appear on BookishFirst.
A thousand years after being cryogenically frozen along with her family, friends and everyone she knew, Andra wakes up. Or is woken up, more accurately. She’s on a strange planet and recognizes nothing—not the landscape, not the people, not even the name they’re calling her. Nobody can seem to explain what’s happened to the ship she was supposed to be traveling on, or why she had been “asleep” for so long. Andra finds herself in a precarious position, trying to navigate political regimes without leaving herself vulnerable to the sharks that keep circling her.
(For my part, being woken up only to be worshipped as a goddess sounds like an actual dream of mine. Maybe in slightly better circumstances than what Andra ended up with, but you’ve got to work with what you got, girl!)
I also appreciated reading about a heroine with a different body type than we usually see in this genre. I’m really sooooo over the ‘young, female assassin’ archetype, being waif-ish or slender with ‘cUrVeS iN aLl ThE rIgHt PlAcES’. What does that even mean???? Andra isn’t special, she’s a truly average teenager who found herself in an insane situation. And that’s what I like most about her, that I can see parts of myself in her reactions to things.
One of the biggest plotholes for me was how Andra seemed unable to find even *one* picture of the previous two goddesses. I mean, they’re on the MONEY, for Christ’s sake. The whole ‘Oooooh who were the other two?!?’ charade was not believable to the point where it took me out every time someone trotted out a lame excuse as to why she didn’t know. Additionally, I understand why the language deviation was introduced, and to an extent I agree that it’s probably a likely outcome for this world, but it was also kind of distracting. By the end it was easier to discern, but yeah, early in the book it was rough going for a bit.
The romantic element came off pretty ham-fisted too, if I’m being honest. It was just really unnecessary. In the midst of all this chaos and upheaval, they have the mental capacity to wonder if, idk, that cute guy maybe likes me? It felt tacked on, like someone told the author, “Hey this is a YA novel, make sure to have some PG-13 kissing or you’ll lose your audience!” It almost undermined their friendship in the end, because I was left wondering if they’d have worked so hard to help one another if they weren’t each nurturing a crush.
This might be a good Science-Fiction book for someone who doesn’t normally read much sci-fi. You don’t have to understand the technology behind what’s happening and a lot of the character interactions (a monarchy, rebel insurgency, etc.) have a very fantasy feel to them. It’s firmly sci-fi cause, duh, it’s set in space, but the YA aspect makes the subject more approachable to the average reader. If you read the blurb and it sounded interesting, I would give Goddess in the Machine a go.
Okay this isn’t actually a book about Chrissy Teigen; the girl on the cover just kind of looks like her. (I believe the main character is at least part Asian, so that makes sense.) The actual writer is a debut author named Lora Beth Johnson, and I have been SO excited to read this one since I first saw it appear on BookishFirst.
A thousand years after being cryogenically frozen along with her family, friends and everyone she knew, Andra wakes up. Or is woken up, more accurately. She’s on a strange planet and recognizes nothing—not the landscape, not the people, not even the name they’re calling her. Nobody can seem to explain what’s happened to the ship she was supposed to be traveling on, or why she had been “asleep” for so long. Andra finds herself in a precarious position, trying to navigate political regimes without leaving herself vulnerable to the sharks that keep circling her.
(For my part, being woken up only to be worshipped as a goddess sounds like an actual dream of mine. Maybe in slightly better circumstances than what Andra ended up with, but you’ve got to work with what you got, girl!)
I also appreciated reading about a heroine with a different body type than we usually see in this genre. I’m really sooooo over the ‘young, female assassin’ archetype, being waif-ish or slender with ‘cUrVeS iN aLl ThE rIgHt PlAcES’. What does that even mean???? Andra isn’t special, she’s a truly average teenager who found herself in an insane situation. And that’s what I like most about her, that I can see parts of myself in her reactions to things.
One of the biggest plotholes for me was how Andra seemed unable to find even *one* picture of the previous two goddesses. I mean, they’re on the MONEY, for Christ’s sake. The whole ‘Oooooh who were the other two?!?’ charade was not believable to the point where it took me out every time someone trotted out a lame excuse as to why she didn’t know. Additionally, I understand why the language deviation was introduced, and to an extent I agree that it’s probably a likely outcome for this world, but it was also kind of distracting. By the end it was easier to discern, but yeah, early in the book it was rough going for a bit.
The romantic element came off pretty ham-fisted too, if I’m being honest. It was just really unnecessary. In the midst of all this chaos and upheaval, they have the mental capacity to wonder if, idk, that cute guy maybe likes me? It felt tacked on, like someone told the author, “Hey this is a YA novel, make sure to have some PG-13 kissing or you’ll lose your audience!” It almost undermined their friendship in the end, because I was left wondering if they’d have worked so hard to help one another if they weren’t each nurturing a crush.
This might be a good Science-Fiction book for someone who doesn’t normally read much sci-fi. You don’t have to understand the technology behind what’s happening and a lot of the character interactions (a monarchy, rebel insurgency, etc.) have a very fantasy feel to them. It’s firmly sci-fi cause, duh, it’s set in space, but the YA aspect makes the subject more approachable to the average reader. If you read the blurb and it sounded interesting, I would give Goddess in the Machine a go.