Exodus of the Phoenix by Robert Stadnik

Thank you to books forward for sending me this for review!

When I had received the e-mail, the subject line intrigued me to check this book out. The subject line said “Features interstellar drag queen”. I immediately was like “yes, I am intrigued.”

However, as I read the book the whole time I was waiting for aliens and a drag queen. Due to this being the first book in the series there was no drag queen to my disappointment. At the end of the book I had to read the books forward e-mail again and I realized that the new character who is a drag queen comes in the new book. So, there is something to look forward too.

With that being said, let’s discuss the book.

I had no idea what I was getting into, but this was a pleasant surprise. I enjoyed the main characters so much. The story has two main character John and Julie. I LOVED John. He was so funny. All the quotes that I marked with a pink sticky tab all had to do with him. His humor was so good. I almost felt like he was my best friend and we were making light of every situation. I think I liked him a lot because he would make remarks to lighten heavy moments and I was like yes, I would totally say that. There were moments that I even laughed out loud at his remarks. Julie was a serious character and I loved how John would poke her buttons. The writing was really enjoyable because you could feel what the characters were feeling. The annoyance that Julie displayed at John came alive off the page.

The story itself read like “guardians of the galaxy” mixed with “Star Trek” and a little bit of “X-men”. I enjoyed learning about the mission that these cadets were assigned too. However, due to how short this book is, it felt that nothing eventful was happening for along time and then all of the sudden we were battling a intergalactic force and the battle was easily resolved.

While I enjoyed the banter between the character the story itself fell short for me. I felt like this was the beginning of what should have been a longer book. And while I know there are follow up books in the series, I felt this portion of the story was incomplete and I wanted more conflict. I found myself thinking that the story was often abrupt. The flow of the story had interruptions in certain places where character would come up that were barely introduced and I had no memory of.

The book left off on a cliff hanger, which is understandable as there are other books in the series. Overall, I really enjoyed the main characters and learning the political system of this story. But, I was disappointed with the lack of interaction with the alien species that the cadets were training to interact with majority of the book.



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