I received an ARC of this book from the publisher through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
Gearbreakers is a fast-paced debut sci-fi YA novel that asks the question of if there is any truly effective way to fight gods. I really enjoyed this book or the first 70% of it at least. I fell into the story of two girls fighting against a government that has created gods from a combination of machines and the enhanced humans who pilot them. However, at about 70% through the novel, I could suddenly see the final twist clearly and knew that I personally was not going to enjoy where this book was headed. This is a book with a sequel to come, and the last 30% of the book really served to set up this sequel and raise the stakes for that book.
The ending of this book is going to be divisive for readers. It will either leave people begging for the next installment or wondering what the point of the book was. For me, I was left questioning what the point was and whether anything that happened in this book mattered if this was the setup for the sequel.
I enjoyed the action sequences throughout the book, especially the ones that showed how well Eris’ gearbreaker crew functioned, and even though parts of this book felt like filler between action sequences, I found that they didn’t drag down the pacing of the book which allowed me to breeze through reading the book.
The book itself is a bit repetitive at times, and I wish that the found family aspect was better developed because it felt like the crew was just an assortment of random people that each cared only about two or three other members of the crew except for Eris, who led the crew and therefore cared about each of them.
The love story between Sona and Eris felt rushed toward the end of the novel, and the deepening of their relationship felt like it just served to raise the stakes for book two. They were moving slowly from enemies to friends to lovers which I was fine with and would have been fine if they had not even reached the point of lovers until book two. Instead, they went from somewhat friendly to absolutely in love and unwilling to separate in the last third of this book.