Collide by Aimee Jessica Russ

29772074.jpgThis must be a dream after all. I pinch myself.

“Ouch.”

Why the hell aren’t I waking up?

After mysteriously waking up on a different planet, not knowing how she got there or even her name, K – as she becomes known – finds herself in a fascinating world much different to the one she can barely remember. K becomes part of an Exodian family and begins to feel at home on the beautiful, peaceful planet known as Exodus. That is until her new world is turned upside down. Can K be brave enough to stand up to the enemy and help her new family save their planet?

 

Alright so just to be clear I really liked Collide but I also had a lot of problems I had to try to wrap my little mind around while I was reading this, merge that with SO MANY conflicting emotions. I was really hot and cold while reading this so I expect this review will most likely be hot and cold too.

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Collide is the story of ‘K’ a girl who has mysteriously materialised on a strange planet, the sky is green, the grass is blue, curly, and grows horizontally, the trees are red and yellow, the people are super tall (I MEAN us mere humans come up to their waists type of tall yeah you try to imagine sexy scenes with that height difference). We learn about the amazing planet of Exodus by K’s descriptions and her own experiences.

She has had her memory wiped/has amnesia (we don’t really know much about whats happened to her but I’m leaning towards wiped memory) so while she knows the basics like her sky is blue and she eats meat, she knows nothing about her own family, fave colour, or what her name is.

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Exodus is the planet the story takes place in. We learn about the new world through K’s experiences and boy is it amazing. I loved the people in the world Aimee created but not so much the images/world building.

All the Exodians are intersex which was a really cool concept and changes up the society in so many ways that is for the better, everyone works hard and their lives are all quite peaceful. They have completely new customs and a new culture that is shown a fair bit. They all eat as a community every night, they work as farmers and don’t eat any meat or kill anything without having to, there is no electricity, no entertainment asides from books, swimming, dancing and conversation.

tumblr_mocl22YmI01r63p18o1_500.gifThe planet has no sickness as there are well springs and waterfalls that heal you when you’re in the water, they have dance festivals when it rains and mud fights. They also have strings that can come out of their finger tips to share information, as well as gills and ears that mold to their heads. The world seems like it could be a utopia but with every amazing planet there’s always another one who wants to claim it as their own.

While I loved the world it also annoyed me for reasons I can say are all mine and that I didn’t expect to have. The thing I realised reading this sci fi is I love intricacy of explanations, the math of science. Hearing the reasons the exodians have gills would have made me love the book all the more. I’d like to know why K doesn’t say anything or ask about it. I wanted to know why the water could heal, how they were able to grow food by kneading the ground, why the trees and people were enormous, and most of all why the sky was green.

I assume its green because of the gasses in the air and actually researched what gasses would make a sky green (Its Chlorine gas if you were wondering) but I would have liked an explanation somewhere so i could wrap my mind around it a bit easier because picturing a green sky when most of the planet was blue was just hard for me.

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Kevin hart is K obviously

Also I’m sorry but I couldn’t appreciate a sex scene between someone who came up to the guys hip I mean how does this work? How are you kissing him? I was surprised they didn’t talk about it and their bodies differences, they didn’t even talk about the fact that K is constantly not able to breath properly she just stares at the others gills and thinks hmm it sure would help if I had those. GIRL there is gas in the air making the sky green and that could possibly be killing you and you don’t even ask any questions about why they have Gills and what it does to their air supply seeing as they don’t use them in the water?

Even with some explanation problems I had and some issues with the writing style I COULDN’T put the book down, I was entranced by it. If you asked me what happens in the first half of the book all I have to say is K met the family, the town, starting working and made some friends. Which sounds like it wouldn’t be that interesting and it wasn’t but I also couldn’t stop myself from wanting to read and read and read (I warned you this review was going to be hot and cold). Everything was new and strange, there was warnings about a warring planet and of course the people who discriminated K on sight for being an Alien was enough drama to keep me invested the story.

I didn’t even realise how invested I was until halfway through and there is a scene that I’m still conflicted about how I feel and if I agree with it/ if I think it needed to be in the storyline.

So even with my issues with the world building and writing I enjoyed the story and can’t wait to read the next book. There are so many questions I have and I need them answered asap.

3/5 stars


This book was our November read a long for The Dragon’s Hoard Box. Have you read it? Do you think you will? Also are you fine with strange things just being added to your sci fi or fantasy or do you like some logic behind it? 

I am definitely a logical one, especially with some of the things in this book my tiny brain just could imagine how things could work so I could imagine them. The whole world just seemed like it would look like a cartoon if I had to describe it to someone.


4 thoughts on “Collide by Aimee Jessica Russ

  1. Thank you so much for this thoughtful review. It can be so challenging writing a review for a book you are both hot and cold on– I think you did a great job!
    It sounds like in this end this book Judy wasn’t well executed. It’s a shame that the world build the didn’t quite connect and the scenes might have seemed a bit off. It sounds like Russ didn’t get too deep into the details of her own novel! Do you think you will look for more by this author?

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Thank you this was one of the harder ones for me to review because I did have fun while I read it but I could also see a lot of its flaws. I think the world could have been really amazing just with some more editing and tweaking. I will definitely be reading More from Aimee, the writing is there, I mean I was kinda annoyed at the world but I devoured this book I just couldn’t stop reading so she’s a really talented writer in my opinion but the sci fi elements just need a little more work for my taste. This book is planned to become a series so hopefully the next book steps it up in the explanations department 😀

      Liked by 1 person

  2. Haha this sums up my feelings for this book so well (hopefully I’ll actually get around to writing my review soon too!) Soo many issues with this book – I’m almost really looking forward to writing my review to tear it asunder!! But yep, you’re so right, such an addictive read!

    Like

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