Johan Harstad

Star and a half for the intermittent paragraphs of dread that occur. Why send teens to the moon? I could not get past this. America wouldn't do this. They don't even send civilians anymore, I think, and I think they might even not send -people-, but satellites. I had to suspend disbelief to read the book, and it was so hard. Pages of the book are dedicated to Mia's love of music. That does not help me get into a book about moon travel. Mia doesn't want to go to the moon, and her parents basically force her to. Suddenly she's okay with it due to being in proximity to a hot guy. It could have been written much smoother than it was. Mia lives in Norway and remarks that teachers must be teaching from lesson plans a hundred years old. In the USA, the -methods- of teaching are based off something that old, but the plans themselves are more modern. Midori is annoying and majorly conceited.

The photorealistic illustrations were interesting. The training requirements for the teens were provided in a huge infodump about ten percent into the ebook. It needed to be spread over the first half of the book, and: show don't tell! Antoine engages in stalking and voyeuristic behavior towards his ex. The paragraphs of slow dread sprinkled throughout the book would be great if they weren't so boring. In between all the world-building infodumps, Midori tells a ghost story about a woman with a mutilated face who asks "Am I beautiful now?" after she takes off her mask. That caught my attention, here in this pandemic. The dread shows up again close to page 200, when the power fails. I was intrigued. The book went back to boring soon after. A hundred pages from the end, the book becomes delightfully scary. A conspiracy theory was made out of Apollo 13 and the phrase, "Houston, we have a problem." I was annoyed.… (more)