Nova by Margaret Fortune (Nova #1)
Released: June 2, 2015
YA Sci Fi
DAW

Reviewed by Mandi

I thought this book had the coolest premise:

*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.

 

And it starts out pretty awesome. Lia had been a prisoner of war, or so she thinks. Her memories are quite hazy – and then the clock starts its countdown. Lia is the bomb, at least that is what we think.

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 in my mind, 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.

Her only motive is to immerse herself in this space station until it’s time for her to explode. But then her clock stops working with just two minutes to go. And as the blurb suggests – as “Bomb Lia” starts to learn more about her former colony and what’s happening at the space station, she starts to second-guess her original motive to kill everyone.

My first big frustration, and what turns into my ultimate dislike of this story is Lia. She is the bomb, using Lia’s body as the host. But the structure of this gets very wishy-washy fast. Sometimes Lia’s body remembers things of Lia’s past, sometimes she doesn’t. We are reminded time and time again that Lia isn’t really Lia

Should I feel bad for my part in his demise?

Perhaps Lia would. But I am not Lia.

I was cool with this. I liked that there is this foreign “thing” inside Lia’s body that has taken over. She can function enough to interact with people, including Michael, Lia’s childhood friend but she still acts a little strange. But then things get mushy. I felt like there needed to be more strict world building and development of Lia.  The reader starts to question what Lia exactly is – is she really the bomb? Is she Lia’s clone? Is she something else? And I think it was too muddled. Even Lia starts questioning herself

My job is to further the war effort, not take revenge against one mean-spirited girl. To go Nova like that, rolling around on the floor with some thief, seems wrong somehow. Unworthy. Maybe it’s just as well I didn’t.

Then again, isn’t it better to go Nova in any way I can than to never go Nova at all? My mission seemed so simple once. How did it ever become so confused?

There was not enough structure of her character. Instead of being twisty and fun – it was frustrating and became boring. For all the drama at the start of this book, not a lot happens in the book. There are the predictable bad people who might be good and good people who might be bad. There is kind of a love interest that forms with Michael. The clock starts and stops and starts and stops.

I’ll be honest and say I skimmed the last third of the book. But I wanted to know the eventual outcome with the bomb. For me, it was a disappointing ending, but maybe others will be more satisfied.

Grade: D

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