Review: And All the Stars, by Andrea K Host

Madeleine Cost is working to become the youngest person ever to win the Archibald Prize for portraiture. Her elusive cousin Tyler is the perfect subject: androgynous, beautiful, and famous. All she needs to do is pin him down for the sittings. 

None of her plans factored in the Spires: featureless, impossible, spearing into the hearts of cities across the world – and spraying clouds of sparkling dust into the wind.

Is it an alien invasion? Germ warfare? They are questions everyone on Earth would like answered, but Madeleine has a more immediate problem. At Ground Zero of the Sydney Spire, beneath the collapsed ruin of St James Station, she must make it to the surface before she can hope to find out if the world is ending.

And All the Stars is a very interesting book. I mean that in a good sense, but also, sort of not. The blurb does not do the book any justice, because Madeleine makes it out to the surface in the first 15 pages. The book is actually about things like fighting off alien invasions and surviving an apparently infectious bodily change, let off by the dust.

This book is hard to classify. It's dystopian, but not. It's science fiction, but not. It's romance, but really not. It's survivalist, not-quite-post-apocalyptic, science-fiction-y, action-ish, with a hint of romance. Madeleine really grows on you the further along in the book you get. Her merry band of men that accumulate around her, their very own survivalist group, grows on you too. Host writes with sparse prose, and that works both to and against her benefit. It's difficult to connect to Madeleine on an emotional level, but at the same time, the reader wants to. At times, it was hard to distinguish between characters as some of them have two and even three nicknames. I kept wondering if their group was growing or if I was crazy for not remembering them. The secondary characters are not very fleshed out.

I felt like a lot of this book's promise was lost in the middle act. There's too much discussion wasted on logistics and hiding and not enough, I don't know, building of the plot. It's like the book wants to be character driven, but it turns out it's supposed to be plot driven. I am still not sure what I think of it all, and it's been a few days since I've finished it. It also took me a bit to slog through the middle part, and I usually finish books very fast.

That being said, I did enjoy the characters, I did enjoy the premise, and the imagery of the aliens was lovely. The epilogue wraps things up almost too perfectly for me, though. The resolution to everything is just too easy, for the entire build-up. It felt forced. Anyway. What I'm saying is, Host is clearly a talented writer, but I'm just not sure if this book worked for me entirely. I look forward to seeing what she produces in the future.

I was given an advanced reader's copy via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. 

- Fire