{"id":1117,"date":"2018-05-10T15:00:44","date_gmt":"2018-05-10T21:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/?p=1117"},"modified":"2018-05-06T16:09:34","modified_gmt":"2018-05-06T22:09:34","slug":"book-gaia-2017","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/2018\/05\/10\/book-gaia-2017\/","title":{"rendered":"BOOK: Gaia (2017)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><u><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/images.gr-assets.com\/books\/1516321535l\/36950659.jpg\" alt=\"Gaia\" width=\"297\" height=\"475\" \/>Gaia<br \/>\n<\/u><\/strong>Year: 2017<br \/>\nAuthor: J.A. Darmanin<br \/>\nLength: 296 pages<\/p>\n<p>***THIS BOOK WAS RECEIVED FROM A GOODREADS GIVEAWAY***<\/p>\n<p>I have mixed feelings about this book. On the one hand, it\u2019s one of those basic Young Adult stories, replete with the clich\u00e9s like the \u201cnormal girl who finds out she\u2019s super-special\u201d and \u201cmain character is the only one who can save the world.\u201d However, it also didn\u2019t have the obscenity, violence, and sexuality that as seemed to permeate most YA books of late. Similarly, I found the main characters to be incredibly annoying, but then they were also written as teenage girls . . . so I guess there\u2019s an amount of realism there.<\/p>\n<p>While there are certainly polished elements to this book, including the cover and some of the formatting, there are a few amateur mistakes that reveal that this is the author\u2019s first book. The biggest problem I had was the variety of plot holes present throughout\u00a0the book. Sure, there were a few moments that came into play later, but then there were others that ended up being utterly pointless after the fact. I also felt there were probably one too many characters in the central trio, but the \u201cthird wheel\u201d kept changing between the main character and her best friend (why was the best friend allowed to come to an alien planet, again?).<\/p>\n<p><em>Gaia<\/em>\u00a0is an admirable first attempt, but some serious revision and polish could certainly make it a better book. I mean, the overplayed mind-reading clich\u00e9 is an author\u2019s cheat to get into the character\u2019s head, but often I found it to be inconsistent in this book, if not wholly unnecessary. Plus, I don\u2019t know many teenage girls who are obsessed with history, especially when the knowledge they convey isn\u2019t anything past a basic understanding. At the very least, there weren\u2019t any apparent hints of a sequel, which was nice.<\/p>\n<p>An adequate first novel filled with clich\u00e9s, I give\u00a0<em>Gaia<\/em>\u00a02.5 stars out of 5.<\/p>\n<h2><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-647\" src=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/255px-Five-pointed_star_svg-150x150.png\" alt=\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" width=\"50\" height=\"50\" \/>\u00a0<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-647\" src=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/255px-Five-pointed_star_svg-150x150.png\" alt=\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" width=\"50\" height=\"50\" \/>\u00a01\/2<\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Gaia Year: 2017 Author: J.A. Darmanin Length: 296 pages ***THIS BOOK WAS RECEIVED FROM A GOODREADS GIVEAWAY*** I have mixed feelings about this book. On the one hand, it\u2019s one of those basic Young Adult stories, replete with the clich\u00e9s like the \u201cnormal girl who finds out she\u2019s super-special\u201d and \u201cmain character is the only [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,54],"tags":[349,55,1301,1299,1300,8,337,235,790,30],"class_list":["post-1117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2-5-stars","category-book","tag-349","tag-book","tag-first-novel","tag-gaia","tag-j-a-darmanin","tag-review","tag-sci-fi","tag-science-fiction","tag-ya","tag-young-adult"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1117"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1117\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1122,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1117\/revisions\/1122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}