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Ignite the Stars (Ignite the Stars, Book 1) by Maura Milan

This book is clearly having an identity crisis with its horrendous mix of an adult theme, teen angst, and juvenile writing.

First off, Ia should be a lot older, late twenties at least. I can’t remember exactly how old she is (because I honestly don’t feel like going back into the book to check), but she’s something like 16 or 17, and I feel like this was done specifically to make the book YA (because it seems like that’s all you need to make a book YA nowadays, teen characters, regardless of story). But back to Ia, her backstory, her history, her character development (whatever you want to call it), even in a sci-fi universe, does not make sense within the realm of a 17-year-old. Killing countless enemies across multiple battles of an interstellar war, earning nicknames like “The Sovereign of Dark Space” and “The Blood Wolf of the Skies”, is an origin story much more suited to an obviously battle-hardened soldier with years of experience. But no, we’re going to put them in a classroom and give them report cards letting them know how much their life sucks (even though it really doesn’t), because that’s what teens can relate to. But again, I get it, YA. And making Ia older would have also made it more difficult for her and Brinn to bond. Easy fix though, make Brinn older. She doesn’t have to be too much older, early twenties would do. That way it would still make sense for her to be a new recruit at the academy after trying several times to get in.

I also want to touch on the fact that Ia got off with a slap on the wrist. Don’t worry, this isn’t a spoiler, this is how the book begins. Ia is basically a rebel soldier fighting against the established government (never seen that before), and the book opens up with her being captured by said government. Given her crimes that I kind of summed up earlier, she faces either imprisonment or execution. However, execution is off the table, because of her age they consider it to be unethical. So, imprisonment, right? (I’m sure there’s still juvenile detention in the future) Nope. They decide that they’re going to recruit her into their academy to utilize her flight skills and train future pilots. I correct myself, this isn’t a slap on the wrist, this is practically a congratulations.

On top of everything, there’s, of course, the stereotypical YA barfy romance. But you can see what I’m getting at. This book’s biggest flaw is its characters, they simply don’t make sense, and were obviously forced into its already poorly built world in an attempt to shoehorn the book into the YA genre.

Books like this are why I wish authors would stop force-feeding their work to a target audience. Just write your story, and whatever it ends up being, that’s what it is.

P.S. I’m perfectly fine with science fiction making up its own curse words, I consider “frak” to be pretty much the gold standard. But "mif" is the STUPIDEST thing I’ve ever heard.