Review - "Invictus"

Invictus
by Ryan Graudin
rating: ☆☆☆☆
published: 26th September 2017
spoilers? nope

Goodreads

He was a hero spurned. No, it felt worse than that. He'd become a bystander in someone else's story.

Galley provided by publisher

Invictus tells the story of Farway McCarthy, a cadet kicked out of the time travelling corps after he fails his final exam, who takes up black market missions so he can travel back in time to find out what happened to his mother. He captains the crew of the TM Invictus - Priya, Gram, Imogen, and Saffron the red panda. On a mission to retrieve a priceless book from the Titanic as it sinks, he encounters another time traveller, but one who's story does not ring true.

From the start, the world building in this book is epic and so unique. It's like nothing I've read before, which is always a good start. But despite the promising opening, the plot builds slowly. Incredibly slowly, that is. It was a good 70% into the book before I got to the point where I couldn't put it down.

Part of that came from the fact that it was overwhelmingly heterosexual. There are two relationships: Far and Priya, and Imogen and Gram. Of the two, I much preferred Imogen and Gram, because you got to see some development of that relationship. When it came to Far and Priya, what you got was them as acquaintances in one part, then a skip-ahead to a few months later and they were boyfriend and girlfriend. Which, honestly, was just tedious. There were even parts of the book I marked as insert heterosexual interlude because it was that boring a relationship. I love Priya and, to a lesser extent, Far, but together they just didn't do anything for me. Both romances felt entirely unnecessary.

Not to mention that Far is an absolute arsehole (I say this even though I love him), and I just couldn't really sympathise with him. He genuinely reminds me of the Brooding YA Hero twitter account. In fact, scrolling through that, I found a number of tweets that actually reminded me of Far. He's arrogant and quite selfish and always trying to do ""heroic"" things and it just grinds on you. He was okay to start with but it quickly got a little boring to read from his point of view.

Another aspect of the plot dragging was that it seemed to have a kind of pattern where it went slow for a bit, then fast for a couple of chapters, then back to slow, and then fast, and so on. And the slow parts were so much longer than the fast parts, which meant that, while several moments had me going HOLY CRAP, they were overwhelmed by the slight boringness of the slower sections.

That all being said, I did really like this book overall. And I think that's because, for me, the dragging in the plot was made up for by the characters and the ending. I loved each and every person in this - especially Eliot, even though at times she bordered on being the ~mysterious girl~ trope personified. And the last 130 pages or so? If only the rest of the book had been so good.

In the end, I just wish it had fully lived up to Blood for Blood.