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Book #33 of 2014: Zhukov's Dogs
Aug. 17th, 2014 05:54 pmZhukov's Dogs by Amanda Cyr (No link available.)
Rating: 2/disliked (1-5/hated-loved)
Book received free for review from Curiosity Quills Press.
Not only can you not tell a book by its cover, you can't tell it by its title either.
Based on the title, Zhukov's Dogs seemed to be a good match for me: I enjoy it when troops/people are referred to as dogs, and I've taken a liking to books about Russian characters. The brief blurb both made it sound interesting and made me wary:
On the verge of promotion, Nik is dispatched to the underground city beneath the icy Seattle tundra. What should’ve been a simple bit of recon is complicated by the underground’s dark secrets. He soon finds himself treated as an equal and swept into battles alongside the misfit revolutionaries he was sent to spy on. Their gray-eyed leader isn’t fooled by his ruse, though, and as Nik worms his way into their lives, he unknowingly breaks the number one rule within his ranks. He allows himself to feel normal. It’s a mistake he pays for dearly when he learns The Council’s true intentions for Seattle.
"Icy Seattle tundra" caught my attention. Though the book was described as "new-adult, science-fiction, action-adventure romance" (way to cover all the bases), I figured it was another dystopia YA novel, and I was right.
I've mentioned before that special eye colors are a really bad sign in books, so I was worried at the gray-eyed bit. Turned out that both of the two main characters in the romance had special eye colors: One had grey eyes and the other heterochromia (brown and blue). Bad, bad sign.
The good points of the book: Based on the summary, it seemed just another teenage romance book. Turned out it was m/m romance. It's very rare for that to happen without "warning" on the cover or in the summary, so I was quite happily surprised by that. And, for almost the first half of the book, I enjoyed the romance part of it.
The bad: I don't even know where to start. Every other character except the two in the romance were one-dimensional. The bad guys were nothing but evil -- I expected the female villain to sprout a mustache just so she could twirl it. None of the characters were believable as people other than the two in the romance.
The logic was so badly off as well. Big elements: On one page, it was mentioned that Seattle was the second biggest producer of recycled metal. A couple pages later, the Council (new government) said they were going to destroy Seattle because it wasn't producing enough recycled metal. I had to stop reading and laugh -- was I suddenly reading Game of Thrones? "You win or you die"? Be the very best at producing or be destroyed?
A couple pages later I encountered GoT again, but didn't laugh. "Grey was the last name given to bastard children fathered by the Grey Men..." Is that a common thing? Naming all bastards of one group the same last name? The only place I've seen that done is in GoT. On top of that, there's an even bigger logic issue from this: The Grey Men are geneteched, not very human anymore. Their blood is poisonous, they're really hard to kill. What in the world are they doing interbreeding with humans? If the government produced them (and it's never explained how, when most of the country is in ruin), why in the world would they be left able to reproduce with people?
More odd things:
- "His smile was far too genuine to belong to a hardened criminal.". Buh? Criminals can't smile? They're never really happy? Nothing is able to get a genuine smile out of them?
- The main character, who has been trained in military/spy stuff since he was five or so years old, was sitting in a holding cell, put there by the Council. For lord knows what reason, he starts talking out loud to himself about what he was done... then is shocked that the cell had a mic in it and his captors heard everything he said.
- The "Dogs" (normal trained people, not geneteched) could heal from a gunshot wound in one day. How? "Dogs are given daily boosts of amino acids, protein, and a half dozen vitamins". Oh, it's that easy, huh?
- One of the two teens in the romance was a pack+ a day smoker. When the nonsmoker kissed him: "his nicotine-sweet lips". Um. NO.
The first half of the book at least had the romance going for it, but by the second it turned into more of an action movie. And I mean movie. Rarely a book is written as if it were intended to be a movie instead -- the characters don't act like people, they act like movie characters. For example, in this scene Dog Teen is trying to save his Rebel boyfriend from a Grey Man. The Grey Men are programmed to obey officers. (It's been announced on TV by the government that Dog Teen is no longer part of their army, the Grey Men are combing Seattle to find and kill him.)
I pushed my bangs out of my eyes. "My name is Nikolas Zhukov," I said. "Lieutenant Colonel of the Y.I.D. and commanding field officer of Battalions Alpha, Tau, Delta, and Zeta... And you're crushing my boyfriend.
Why, when the Grey Men are hunting Dog Teen down to kill him, would they obey him? Wouldn't the people who sent the Grey Men out tell them not to listen to him? And why in the world would Dog Teen order something other than "Stop!", "Drop him!", or some other impossible-to-misinterpret command? "And you're crushing my boyfriend" only implies that they should stop. The Grey Men are described as stupid, so do you really want them to have to take the time to think that through while they're crushing your boyfriend?
I only made it through 80% of the book. There were just too many plot holes, unbelievable characters, and unexplained things (what happened to the country? Why was most of it buried in snow? why was the government gone and replaced by a council? how in the world did a nation in that state get to the level of gene technology that would allow them to produce Grey Men?). I wasn't enjoying the book at all.
It's only been 11 days since my last review, but it feels like I spent months trying to get through this book.
Rating: 2/disliked (1-5/hated-loved)
Book received free for review from Curiosity Quills Press.
Not only can you not tell a book by its cover, you can't tell it by its title either.
Based on the title, Zhukov's Dogs seemed to be a good match for me: I enjoy it when troops/people are referred to as dogs, and I've taken a liking to books about Russian characters. The brief blurb both made it sound interesting and made me wary:
On the verge of promotion, Nik is dispatched to the underground city beneath the icy Seattle tundra. What should’ve been a simple bit of recon is complicated by the underground’s dark secrets. He soon finds himself treated as an equal and swept into battles alongside the misfit revolutionaries he was sent to spy on. Their gray-eyed leader isn’t fooled by his ruse, though, and as Nik worms his way into their lives, he unknowingly breaks the number one rule within his ranks. He allows himself to feel normal. It’s a mistake he pays for dearly when he learns The Council’s true intentions for Seattle.
"Icy Seattle tundra" caught my attention. Though the book was described as "new-adult, science-fiction, action-adventure romance" (way to cover all the bases), I figured it was another dystopia YA novel, and I was right.
I've mentioned before that special eye colors are a really bad sign in books, so I was worried at the gray-eyed bit. Turned out that both of the two main characters in the romance had special eye colors: One had grey eyes and the other heterochromia (brown and blue). Bad, bad sign.
The good points of the book: Based on the summary, it seemed just another teenage romance book. Turned out it was m/m romance. It's very rare for that to happen without "warning" on the cover or in the summary, so I was quite happily surprised by that. And, for almost the first half of the book, I enjoyed the romance part of it.
The bad: I don't even know where to start. Every other character except the two in the romance were one-dimensional. The bad guys were nothing but evil -- I expected the female villain to sprout a mustache just so she could twirl it. None of the characters were believable as people other than the two in the romance.
The logic was so badly off as well. Big elements: On one page, it was mentioned that Seattle was the second biggest producer of recycled metal. A couple pages later, the Council (new government) said they were going to destroy Seattle because it wasn't producing enough recycled metal. I had to stop reading and laugh -- was I suddenly reading Game of Thrones? "You win or you die"? Be the very best at producing or be destroyed?
A couple pages later I encountered GoT again, but didn't laugh. "Grey was the last name given to bastard children fathered by the Grey Men..." Is that a common thing? Naming all bastards of one group the same last name? The only place I've seen that done is in GoT. On top of that, there's an even bigger logic issue from this: The Grey Men are geneteched, not very human anymore. Their blood is poisonous, they're really hard to kill. What in the world are they doing interbreeding with humans? If the government produced them (and it's never explained how, when most of the country is in ruin), why in the world would they be left able to reproduce with people?
More odd things:
- "His smile was far too genuine to belong to a hardened criminal.". Buh? Criminals can't smile? They're never really happy? Nothing is able to get a genuine smile out of them?
- The main character, who has been trained in military/spy stuff since he was five or so years old, was sitting in a holding cell, put there by the Council. For lord knows what reason, he starts talking out loud to himself about what he was done... then is shocked that the cell had a mic in it and his captors heard everything he said.
- The "Dogs" (normal trained people, not geneteched) could heal from a gunshot wound in one day. How? "Dogs are given daily boosts of amino acids, protein, and a half dozen vitamins". Oh, it's that easy, huh?
- One of the two teens in the romance was a pack+ a day smoker. When the nonsmoker kissed him: "his nicotine-sweet lips". Um. NO.
The first half of the book at least had the romance going for it, but by the second it turned into more of an action movie. And I mean movie. Rarely a book is written as if it were intended to be a movie instead -- the characters don't act like people, they act like movie characters. For example, in this scene Dog Teen is trying to save his Rebel boyfriend from a Grey Man. The Grey Men are programmed to obey officers. (It's been announced on TV by the government that Dog Teen is no longer part of their army, the Grey Men are combing Seattle to find and kill him.)
I pushed my bangs out of my eyes. "My name is Nikolas Zhukov," I said. "Lieutenant Colonel of the Y.I.D. and commanding field officer of Battalions Alpha, Tau, Delta, and Zeta... And you're crushing my boyfriend.
Why, when the Grey Men are hunting Dog Teen down to kill him, would they obey him? Wouldn't the people who sent the Grey Men out tell them not to listen to him? And why in the world would Dog Teen order something other than "Stop!", "Drop him!", or some other impossible-to-misinterpret command? "And you're crushing my boyfriend" only implies that they should stop. The Grey Men are described as stupid, so do you really want them to have to take the time to think that through while they're crushing your boyfriend?
I only made it through 80% of the book. There were just too many plot holes, unbelievable characters, and unexplained things (what happened to the country? Why was most of it buried in snow? why was the government gone and replaced by a council? how in the world did a nation in that state get to the level of gene technology that would allow them to produce Grey Men?). I wasn't enjoying the book at all.
It's only been 11 days since my last review, but it feels like I spent months trying to get through this book.
