From Goodreads:
*36:00:00*
The
clock activates so suddenly in my mind, my head involuntarily jerks a bit to
the side. The fog vanishes, dissipated in an instant as though it never was.
Memories come slotting into place, their edges sharp enough to leave furrows,
and suddenly I know. I know exactly who I am.
My name
is Lia Johansen, and I was named for a prisoner of war. She lived in the
Tiersten Internment Colony for two years, and when they negotiated the return of
the prisoners, I was given her memories and sent back in her place.
And I am
a genetically engineered human bomb.
Lia
Johansen was created for only one purpose: to slip onto the strategically
placed New Sol Space Station and explode. But her mission goes to hell when her
clock malfunctions, freezing her countdown with just two minutes to go. With no
Plan B, no memories of her past, and no identity besides a name stolen from a
dead POW, Lia has no idea what to do next. Her life gets even more complicated
when she meets Michael Sorenson, the real Lia’s childhood best friend.
Drawn to Michael and his family
against her better judgment, Lia starts learning what it means to live and
love, and to be human. It is only when her countdown clock begins sporadically
losing time that she realizes even duds can still blow up. If she wants
any chance at a future, she must find a way to unlock the secrets of her past
and stop her clock. But as Lia digs into her origins, she begins to suspect
there’s far more to her mission and to this war, than meets the eye. With the
fate of not just a space station but an entire empire hanging in the balance,
Lia races to find the truth before her time—literally—runs out.
Nova was not at all what I
expected. As I started reading it was
more like a YA book with a 16 year old main character. 2/3 of the way through it took an
unexpected twist.
That twist made Lia’s mission
something entirely different. Then
there was a discovery that seemed to lead to a much different ending. I was
surprised. Even though the entire
book had been leading up to it I did not expect it to end as it did.
What I liked was that unexpected
twist that made this an entirely different story from what it seemed at the
beginning. I did find the story a
little slow at the beginning. Lia
spends a lot of time trying to remember who and what she is. While it was part of the build up to
the twist it really was not as much of a mystery to me, the reader, as it was
to Lia.
There were two very interesting
secondary characters who were important to the story and Lia. Michael and his sister Teal are the two
Lia interacts with the most and in the end the two who help her complete her
mission.
Nova is a good addition to the
Science Fiction world. Pick it up
and see if you are as surprised as I was to see why Lia was a human bomb.
Nova is book one in a new series. It will be interesting to see where the
story goes from here. Lia and her
mission are just the beginning. I
will be looking for the next book in the series to see what happens next.
Daw published Nova by Margaret
Fortune in 2015.
