Review: 27 Hours by Tristina Wright

Genre: YA science fiction

Publisher: Entangled Teen

Publication Date: October 3, 2017

Summary:

Rumor Mora fears two things: hellhounds too strong for him to kill, and failure. Jude Welton has two dreams: for humans to stop killing monsters, and for his strange abilities to vanish.

But in no reality should a boy raised to love monsters fall for a boy raised to kill them.

Nyx Llorca keeps two secrets: the moon speaks to her, and she’s in love with Dahlia, her best friend. Braeden Tennant wants two things: to get out from his mother’s shadow, and to unlearn Epsilon’s darkest secret.

They’ll both have to commit treason to find the truth.

During one twenty-seven-hour night, if they can’t stop the war between the colonies and the monsters from becoming a war of extinction, the things they wish for will never come true, and the things they fear will be all that’s left.

27 Hours is a sweeping, thrilling story featuring a stellar cast of queer teenagers battling to save their homes and possibly every human on Sahara as the clock ticks down to zero.

**Disclaimer: I received a finished copy of 27 Hours in exchange for an honest review.**

First of all, I want to apologize a little. I took an unofficial hiatus because the latter half of my semester got busy and I needed to focus on finals and readings for class, and I fell behind on everything else. But now I’m done with the semester and ready to get back on track!

27 Hours was a book that I was pretty intrigued about before I was offered to review it. I admit I don’t read much sci-fi or fantasy anymore, mostly because of length and because I just can’t commit to series, but I do love the genres and tend to gravitate toward them in other media. 27 Hours seemed like a good place to jump back into the genre, especially as it centers a diverse group of queer characters. After all, one of my frustrations about YA SFF was the common inclusion of a heterosexual romance subplot that seemed to revolve around the same types of characters.

I enjoyed the action-fast first pages that threw you into the world with lush descriptions. While I personally like this writing style in this genre, I understand it isn’t for everyone. I’m definitely one to be more invested in character and setting than plot (unless it’s an intricate mystery-type book), so I enjoyed exploring the world and getting to know the characters. The romances were absolutely swoon-worthy and lovely. That said, I didn’t think Braeden’s asexuality was presented entirely accurately: it was constantly equated to not having sex, whereas it is only the absence of sexual attraction (some ace people are sex-repulsed, others aren’t, etc). I was also a little disappointed that it was always the men who were physically fighting.

I can’t really write this review without linking to this one, which explored the lack of true racial representation and how the main characters’ species and race affected the themes of colonialism. Wright certainly acknowledges the issue of colonialism, but in my experience reading it, I definitely saw the chimera as some sort of monstrous “Other” even though they turn out to be intelligent and communicable beings. It will be interesting to see how they’re involved in the rest of the series.

I do think Wright tries to explain the lack of connection (most of) the teens have with the ancestry with mention of a generation ship thing, but a “universal” language emerging 150-200 years in the future does leave many questions. There’s a lot of cultural erasing going on when you have to delete languages (and indeed the society portrayed is rather Western), all universal language attempts thus far have really failed to make a difference, and some things just don’t plain translate, making the whole process difficult and leaving a lot of sacrifices behind. Furthermore, Nyx is Deaf and she and other characters communicate in sign language, which itself would not only prove an exception to the “universal language” thing (sign language has its own grammar and syntax!), but also…which sign language survived? There are several versions.

Overall, I enjoyed 27 Hours if I don’t poke too many holes in it. My record at actually reading sequels is pretty miserable, but I am curious to how this might continue.