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Jul 04, 2016samcmar rated this title 2.5 out of 5 stars
I seem to have a weird love-hate relationship with Veronica Rossi's writing. I remember reading Under the Never Sky on the recommendation of my friends and not being impressed by it. Then I read the sequels that followed, adored them, and was still confused why I didn't connect with that first book. I feel like this might be the same thing with Riders. That's not to say Riders is a bad book, but once again I feel insanely distanced by the writing, and I really didn't like our hero, Gideon. I just found him to be such a flat protagonist, someone whose thoughts didn't always feel that engaging or interesting to read about. Worse off is the fact that we meet tons of other characters, but they are barely developed in any way. I just didn't feel like I knew them very well, and part of that really steams from just only being trapped in Gideon's mind. However, I loved the concept of this story, and when the action was on, it was fantastic. I just found myself turning pages, needing to know how things were going to go. I'll also give this to Rossi -- the ending of this book is quite the cliffhanger, and despite all my problems with Gideon as a character, she left this book on such a mean note that I STILL will likely end up reading the sequel because I need to know. But this book is both interesting as it is frustrating. There's so many ideas being thrown about, there's a lot of world-building, it almost felt like too much at times. With Gideon's perspective not always being engaging, I found it hurt the experience for me somewhat and Rossi's writing didn't always carry it for me the way it did in the Under the Never Sky series. Still, I don't think this is a bad book, but I just didn't have the same level of engagement that I was hoping for. I do think, like with Under the Never Sky that I am going to check out the sequel, just to see if it's the same kind of situation or if it really is the case that this series doesn't work for me. Also, not enough horses. Needs more horses!