LIFEL1K3 by Jay Kristoff | Let's Discuss

About the book:

The story centers on the life of Eve Carpenter, a fighter at the WarDome. Following her on her journey, we get acquainted with her friends, Cricket, Lemon Fresh and Kaiser. Eve's mecha got broken in her latest fight so when they saw a ship crashing, they couldn't pass the opportunity and they went there in hopes of scavenging metal parts, only to find an android male that they brought home with them.

Action starts to kick in as they regroup back home. Deviate powers manifesting, the android male thinks of her as someone he knew, Eve's life may not be as she thought it was.

Genre:

Mecha, Tech, Futuristic, Science Fiction, Dystopia, Action, Post-Apocalyptic

Other info:

Female Protagonist, Awesome side characters, first book of Lifel1k3

Author:

Jay Kristoff

** spoiler alert **

Spoilers of the story within this post. These are my thoughts about the novel.

LIFEL1K3

💎 March 10, 2022 - Want to read

I discovered it in Goodreads and shelved it.

💎 March 24, 2022 - Start reading

The book cover is so catchy I decided to get started already!

💎 April 9, 2022 - 4%

Gosh I am so stuck! There are just too many jargons and the world building is so hard to immerse in. I am not a sucker for mechs and robots so this was a hard start.

💎 April 12, 2022 - 24%

Okay so things are getting good. As usual I am having issues loving the MC but her sidekick Lemon Fresh and Kaiser are a sight to see. Ezekiel though, I am not sure what to make of him. He's described handsome in so many ways (as all guys are described really) but I don't find him amazing.

💎 April 13, 2022 - 50%

Got a lot of free time in my hands and made progress woohoo! I'm curious of the powers and I am not a fan of the Preacher but Lemon just kept being awesome!

💎 April 14, 2022 - 100%

I got to the point that I wanted to finish it already, not because of the hype but because I want to read other books and I don't want to be stuck with this one.

Let the discussion begin!

It took a while to finish this one. It's like Red Rising, it started off slow. Like really slow and I almost wanted to give up for numerous reasons.

Writing.

Disregarding my lack of interest with robots and mech, I pushed through to read it because the cover is nice, the plot sounded good and my friend YaDaiyu recommended a book written by the author.

The world building is really creative, I love it but it confuses me in ways that I can't picture the image well in my head. Another thing is the language. While I also write incorporate made-up local slang in a world of my imagination, this one was too much for me to process. Especially if I'm not fully immersed in their world just yet. Like maybe just a little by little mention of these new jargons in the first couple of chapters, but no. I got thrown in a foreign world, unknown world and unknown slang. I haven't and am barely keeping up at the first couple of chapters and the only thing keeping me going is a nice read of dialogue exchange but oftentimes I can't even relate to them.

It would have been okay really, but I'd really appreciate it if the author gave me time to cope up to his world a bit. So, I struggled to keep going until I hit 24%.

This part, beware of possible SPOILERS!!!

Characters.

Eve Carpenter / Ana Monrova

It's common issue that the MC is struggling to be loved by most readers but I can say that Eve/Ana isn't that bad. She's an OK for me like how Darrow is an OK. Not amazing, not worse. Just in the middle. I can't name moments of her that I love, but I did enjoy how the flashbacks were written. Tragic as they may, it was so poetic and written in cinematic-style, almost like how fanfiction utilizes the italics for throwback dialogues and trigger a scene in my imagination. Mostly I guess it's the death scenes that I loved but the rest of the flashbacks didn't feel interesting much.

What was I talking about again? Ah yes, Eve. I liked her better as Ana. Same person but, it's just my personal preference. I think she is better as Ana.

Lemon Fresh

Everyone loves Lemon Fresh and I won't argue because I do too. She's witty and full of humor and she gives freaking life to the book because Eve and Ezekiel pretty much makes the whole world grim and boring.

Cricket

Cricket is okay. He's like Pinocchio's own cricket really. He's small, he's a robot and he's the bot being Eve's conscience and attempts to stop her from doing all the stupid decisions she does. Despite this role, I am not fond of him. Why name him 'Cricket' which literally just pastes him closer to Jiminy Cricket?

Silas

Silas knows how to banter I'll give him that. He's Eve's grandfather... or so we thought. We didn't get much of him after he got kidnapped in the first part of the book's arc and reappearing again in the ending. Probably he had potential to unravel more character development but at the same time, he served his purpose so it didn't matter whether he comes back or not.

Ezekiel

Ezekiel, I get it handsome and has pecks but for me his character isn't as well-built as his pecks. It was flat. He's the Lifelike-love-interest of Eve obviously. Maybe it's a success on the Author's part to write how a robot wants to love but to me as a reader, I just noticed he's protective yes, like a loyal guard dog but romancing with the MC not very much impact. Something like that. I mean, it doesn't taking being described beautiful, flawless skin or abs to be an attractive love interest!!! Personality could work too.

Preacher.

If I understood it correctly, he's some sort of bounty hunter after Eve. I hate him. GOSH just die already! Why doesn't this guy just make a quiet exit, he's the abnorm around here. Even Ezekiel couldn't lay a finger on him, there is seriously something abnorm about this character. Like in every show there is an undying villain and he's it!

Hope.

Another Lifelike from Eve's past. Reading her name in the flashbacks made me hate her but at present, she changed my mind.

I am a sucker for characters who wants redemption. For the most part, I think the redemption process is what gives them character development to be someone better than who they were. Someone to love and follow and be a motivation to finish this book. What the author did to this girl, she didn't deserve it. I hoped she can return in the next book.

Kaiser.

No words for this doggo. Of course I love this scrap like I do Lemon! For some reason, sidekick dogs are usually loved so no argument here.

Gabriel and Faith.

They are the antagonists of the book, lifelikes just like Ezekiel and Hope.

Hate them. I don't need to rant a paragraph to express how much I disliked them.

WARNING! NOW THIS PART CONTAINS MAJOR SPOILERS!!!!

Plot twist.

So many people say it's predictable and it doesn't have the wow factor the story is building up on. Can't say I've read that much books to judge easily like that because mostly I read to relax, relieve stress or just really enjoy a nice story in my leisure time. I'm not reading it to judge a case.

Maybe there's some predictable moments, and maybe there's some unpredictable ones that isn't very wow-material, but doesn't mean it's a bad story.

X-Men, Bladerunner, Mad Max and whatnot references were already mentioned prior, so one can expect that one way or another, there'd be familiar tropes and similar twists along the way. Kind of like salt is a similar ingredient to two recipes but doesn't make the meal the same.

Here are a couple of plot twists from the book.

Eve's powers.

Early in the book, Eve had been manifesting deviant powers, being able to knock out machine and robots with her mind. She doesn't fully control it and works rarely, like maybe in super emergencies but not entirely a main ability she relied in. But later we find out that all along it wasn't Eve who had these powers. It was Lemon. Eve herself was mindblown by this revelation and so am I.

What I love about this plot twist is that, the MC doesn't get the cool power like any other trope there is. The side character has it. Like seriously, the plot armor and cool powers to the MC is not always nice to see. Sometimes I'd say 'don't die!' but on the other hand, I'd like to appreciate the side characters too. The twist here has done that for Lemon Fresh and I love it.

Grandpa Silas.

Silas was introduced to be Eve's grandfather and he's shown care for Eve like any grandfather would to their grandchildren. Nothing to be suspicious of until it was revealed it wasn't the case. That he was an employee of Eve's father and that he and Ezekiel had plotted to take Eve away from the slaughter.

I had no suspicion but it didn't leave any impact on me, I just read on like normal.

Eve is Ana Monrova.

We were introduced to Eve Carpenter and we've been following her life from the beginning. She gives off a Crowe Altius and maybe Victra au Julii vibe mostly. But later we discover that she is the last heir of the Monrova family. Much like Anastasia Romanov trope really.

Again, it is not very wow for me to discover but I do love her more as Ana than Eve.

Eve is a lifelike.

In the last part of the book, Eve got captured because she stupidly went to enemy base alone driven by emotions really. There are 4 forms of security measure to unlock some sort of vault that the bad guy wants because Gabriel wants to create more lifelikes and revive his dear Grace.

For that he needed Ana. Voice, fingerprint (I don't remember lol) and when it came to the blood test, after the processing it was rejected. Now for that part there was a tingle at the back of my head that says something is wrong but I didn't play detective and read on. After the big fight we later find out that this Ana is actually also a lifelike and the real one is hospitalized and kept somewhere.

This plot twist was partly nice because it gave me chills. In times like this, I just rely on the goosebumps on my arms to judge if it was a worthy plot twist to be commended or not. This one made the cut.

Final

Overall I thought I'd DNF the book and even declare a pass on the sequels but after finishing it, I think I'd give the second book a try. I just need a break and read other books though, it was kind of hard to get through this lol.

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