Jubilee Year

“What if the world were about to end, but they weren’t going to tell you? Eighteen-year-old Storm lives in a small country town in Australia, next to one of the most famous telescopes in the world. When he falls for Penny, the daughter of the chief scientist at the observatory, he discovers a global conspiracy of silence. He learns a mini-star system approaches Earth, and the penalty for any scientist who talks about it is death. – Jubilee Year”

If Storm and his companions are to survive they must stay out of the way of the government’s security forces, assassination squads working for powerful hidden entities, and the internment camps for dissenters. Even his special ability is not going to be enough. He must accept help when it’s offered. But others are not who they seem to be and neither is the reality of a world Storm thought he knew”

Upon going into this book, I had checked out a few reviews to see if I would end up liking this book. Most of the reviews were very positive, so I was excited to get into it. I love space; I love any kind of book or and story relating to astronomy and that kind of science. I was however disappointed a bit in this book and this plot.

To start, I’m not sure very much editing went into this novel. On nearly every page I found an editing mistake. Whether it was the wrong use of a word (like their, there, they’re), or an incomplete sentence, they were everywhere. Sometimes a word would be there when it clearly was meant to have been deleted. Poor editing, at least for me, really takes away from the enjoyment of a novel. If it’s not in proper English, how am I supposed to read it?

Secondly, there was far, far too much dialogue. I felt like the plot was thrown at me in series of constant conversations. Sometimes, this can be worked incorrectly for the story, but not with Jubilee Year. I don’t like when the plot line is handed to me. I like finding out things in creative ways other than just through dialogue. This book was like the script to a movie, not a novel.

The last thing I didn’t like about this novel was that it was taking too long to get into the plot. My kindle won’t tell me how far I was into the book, but  I believe it was at least 30% before I put it down and did not finish. Nothing intriguing was happening. However, I might not have given it enough time for the novel to really settle in. Other reviews of the book mentioned the long, dragged out beginning was worth it in the end.

In my opinion, if the book starts off slow and doesn’t really catch my interest, there’s no point in continuing. Maybe one of these days I’ll sit down and finish the novel but, I lost interest a while back. On a positive note, I definitely did enjoy the astronomy & science mentioned in the beginning of the book. It was fairly accurate and well researched.

I’d say if you like slow, poorly edited novels with a space theme to it, then Jubilee Year is the book for you. I personally just did not have the patience for it. From what I’d read so far, I’d give Jubilee Year two and a half out of five stars, tops.

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