Hey fellow Bookworms, I have a collaboration review to share with you guys… You know how we wish we could read ALL the books but sadly life gets in the way.. I know you understand.. However I hate leaving author’s hanging so I asked My good Friend Rafael who is an avid Sci/Fi reader to tackle this book review (He has done some other collaborations on the blog – recommendations and beginner’s guides – in case you want to check them out) Let’s get to it:
ARKO: The Dark Union by U. W. Leo
The first thing I’m going to say about Arko: The Dark Union is that it is a good book. It’s not amazing; it’s not even very good, it’s just good.
If you ask me if I would recommend it, my answer would be yes. As a matter of fact, that’s what I’m doing right now! But let me warn you: the book has issues, and a lot of flaws.
One flaw that stood out to me, personally, is its lack of identity. When Chelle asked me to write the review for this book, she said that it was an MG book; and on the author’s website the description reads “A group of tweens unearth the most significant discovery in world history, designed to save the human species…from itself”.
A couple of chapters in and I was thinking “this book isn’t middle grade”. Those tweens do not behave like 12-year-old kids; they behave like twenty-something young adults. Their parents, legal tutors or whatever, treated them as equals instead of children in their care.
That’s another issue; bad parenting. The parents or legal tutors of these children, all scientists, by the way, are the worst parents in the world AND the worst scientists in the world as well.
In the book, the kids find some pterosaurs’ eggs and the parents’ great idea was to change their genetic code, (waaaaay unethical, by the way), and give a freaking flying carnivorous dinosaur from the Triassic period to the kids for them to raise them! (For those who have seen Jurassic World, those things that eat the nanny? That’s what I’m talking about)
I was still thinking “cool, something like How to train your dragon or whatever” until I found a pterosaur image… That’s just silly.
In a nutshell, the people that are in charge of the welfare of children let them ride the carnivorous gigantic lizard through the sky, like Link did in the Skyward Sword video game.
Chelle told me that apparently it’s a common trope in books, Bad Parenting I mean. She literally told me that people are asking which is better: absent parents or irresponsible ones.
But they are not only bad parents, as I mentioned before; they are bad scientists as well. They talk scientific gibberish, jump to baseless conclusions and touch everything that they find without proper protocol. Sometimes I wondered if I wasn’t reading the script from the movie Prometheus.
I apologize in advance because we are getting into Spoiler Territory, so be warned and read at your own risk..
The book has lots of contradictions and lots of unnecessary things. And I don’t blame the author for this, I blame the editor who didn’t tell him how this part contradicts this other part, or that capturing a bunch of kids and not locking the door is stupid; and mostly how 12 year-olds with guns is a big NO in storytelling, especially if it adds nothing to the plot.
Then there’s this thing in the end… that takes away the entire Character agency from the story. So yeah, that… thing… justifies all the contradictions that I mentioned above.
If you ask me: aren’t all those things enough to skip this book? It would depend on your ability to turn off your brain and just enjoy the ride.
Regardless, the book has good characters, you really care for them; it has a good story, even if a bit convoluted, that involves Aztec mythology mixed with ancient technology, alien civilizations and, of course, we can’t forget the dinosaurs. But more importantly, this is the first book of a series, so there is a chance for improvement.
Reading Arko: The Dark Union is like watching a B movie or an OK tv show. It is not the Godfather or Star Wars (the old ones) of books; more like Fast and Furious Tokyo Drift or Return of the living dead 2.
You’ll be entertained and have a good time with it. Afterwards, you can discuss bad parenting with your friends who have read it, in reddit or Disscord, or you can leave a comment here if you want. I’ll really appreciate it.
Thanks to Rafael for this collaboration, he really went above and beyond with it.
If you want to help me to keep creating content and making you at least smile a bit with my quirky posts and ranty opinions plus feeding your TBR monter with recommendations, just visit my Ko-fi page or Paypal.me/cbookramblings and support my work..
As Always
Happy Reading
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Sometimes when you read a book that’s ok and have all those questionable spins and characters… they linger in your brain and are the ones you will remember for ever! I have have read many great books that I don’t remember as clearly as I would like, instead my memories from the 8- book series Indigo stays strong! And it’s funny because I found some parts of the book good, and some parts corny and absurd… but in its absurdity it end up a reference text for my life! Specially because my father also read it, and we laugh together about it.
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That’s true. Sometimes those little things that botheres us in a book tend to become memorable, while those that we loved all the way vanish a bit with time. This has happened to me as well and it’s hilarious.
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