On Starlight

First of all, I want to preface this by saying how sketchy it is that most of the reviews of this book were posted by users who have only ever read this book. It’s also weird that they all gave it five stars when this work is a veritable piece of shit.

To start off, Alexis Campbell—the main character—is absolute trash. She is narcissistic, boring, needlessly aggressive, and outright unlikable. She spends half of the book mooching off her best friend and his mother without doing anything to improve her own life. The blurb says this book is about her deciding whether or not she should get revenge against the guy who sexually assaulted her in the military, but this is a lie. C. A. Taylor has no idea what she wants this book to be about. The text definitely starts with that path, but then she finds a group of people called “the Underground” (ooooh, scary) and dicks around with them for a bit before coming back to the conflict the blurb talks about in the last twenty pages of the book. Not to mention, there is nothing driving the plot.

There are no multidimensional characters in this book. Let me explain some of the characters.

Alexis: She’s the main character. She’s depressed, whiny, and annoying as shit. Somehow she’s the hero, but I spent the whole book hoping that one of her insane accidentals would wind up being fatal so she could just be killed off. Keeps saying she’s “not maternal.” Shes smokes a lot and takes anti-depressants.

Reynolds: This is the guy who sexually assaulted Alexis.

Spoiler

He winds up dead.

Marly: Marly was Alexis’s best friend in the military, but we don’t know why. We know almost nothing about Marly, but she was killed in Mosul by insurgents. Alexis spends the whole book pining for her.

Cait: Cait is another military friend. She’s dead.

Seamus: Seamus is Alexis’s best friend in civilian life. He’s gay and owns a business. He winds up dead. We don’t really know anything else about him.

Nora: Nora is Seamus’s mom. She’s homophobic because she was raised as an Irish Catholic in New York and was ostracized from her community for having a child out of wedlock. She also winds up dead.

Jesse: This guy’s the leader of the Underground. He lives in Detroit and is dark and mysterious. He likes history.

Travis: This dude is the one who keeps showing up when Alexis wakes up from deadly situations. He’s Canadian and is a fast driver. He’s Jesse’s friend. Apparently he’s supposed to be a romantic interest, but this is impossible to tell from the text itself because the characters have no chemistry.

Anna: She’s Alexis’s half-sister, who Alexis despises for some reason. We don’t really know why.

Drummer: This guy’s British and is Jesse’s friend. We don’t really know anything else about him.

Mark: He’s the sworn enemy of Jesse or something. He doesn’t die, suggesting he’ll show up in future installments. We don’t know much about him. Oh by the way, he’s Asian or smth.

Oliver: Oliver is Mark’s lackey. He’s Irish and gets the shit beaten out of him but he survives.

These are all the characters. None of them are particularly redeeming. It’d be cool if they all were killed in a nuclear bomb. The Underground is apparently an organization that traffics drugs and elicit materials or smth. We don’t really know because it isn’t explained. Whatever it is, it isn’t a cool spy organization. They pretty much just do illegal stuff for money.

Now, I must say that white people can write POC characters. However, C. A. Taylor cannot. Rather than giving any of her POC characters any depth, she just sorta labels them as POC and lets them go. For example:

Spoiler

“I watched the twenty-something-year-old Latin American with my eyes and gnawed on the end of my bread roll. I watched her shoot me looks over her back, and watched her take her seat amongst the other Latino soldiers.”

The character falls out of the story, never to re-enter again. Another charming quote, this time describing Max is as follows:

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“He looked like he had Asian ancestry, but his voice was American.”

. Truly profound. This continues with Jesse calling Detroit’s Mexicantown a “slum” without any sort of explanation other than the name, which explicitly refers to an ethnic group. In fact, she describes all of Detroit as essentially a slum:

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I was exposed to a whole new plethora of weaponry that I never had with the Army. These were limitless and endless supplies of illegal weapons coming through Detroit. Bundles of cocaine bound tightly in plastic wrap would pile high into the sky.

Her biggest crime here, however, is her use of the N-word. Granted, Alexis says it’s a bad word, but the author should not be using it so casually.

Another major failing is the author’s lack of any understanding of the world around her. For example, she mentions that

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“It was a four-hour trip between Kuwait City and where our base was stationed, an hour’s drive from Tabriz, northern Iran.”

. However, this is outright false. Kuwait City and Tabriz separated by an 18-hour drive. Moreover, the American base is in Iran, which doesn’t make any sense at all whatsoever. She treats the war between ISIS and the rest of the world as an episode in Star Wars:

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“There were rebel forces taking control of Mosul in Iraq. So orders were given for three units to go restore order and fight the Resistance.”

. A military officer has a “burning Cuban cigar” even though these are contraband in the US. Apparently a history buff (Jesse) also thinks that the Colosseum was “discovered” by archaeologists, even though it has literally just been standing there for 2000 years. This isn’t a fault on the part of the character, but on the part of the author. Not to mention, slang that is not used in the US is used rather regularly. For example, one character refers to another as a “git,” which is something I’ve never heard an American say. Maybe the author should consider writing about her own experiences in Australia, rather than things she doesn’t understand or (at the very least) take the time to investigate.

In addition, the author completely misuses words. For example, she uses “withdraw” on page 342 to mean “take out,” like “she withdrew her gun.” Little does Taylor know, this means to put away, not to take out. Even though she does not understand the meaning of the word “withdraw,” she feels it necessary to explain to us what “to jack” means (

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‘Jacked’ meaning he or someone screwed up and now things didn’t work like their supposed to."

) and what “to rage quit” means (

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“Rage quitting was to basically storm out of something, throw the Monopoly board, or throw the video game controller - everything Anna did when she couldn’t get her own way.”

).

I’ll include some examples of simply bad writing at the end of this review, just so readers of it can get a better sample. Taylor ultimately fails to “show” us anything useful about characters or the plot. She tries to explain backgrounds but fails enormously.

Absolutely do not pay money to read this book. If you’re reading it, you should be gaining some sort of monetary compensation. If C. A. Taylor wants to continue writing, I highly suggest that she actually learn what makes good writing good. Self-publishing on Amazon is a crutch, and this work is in dire need of an editor. Maybe one day (probably not for a few decades though lol) she’ll be published with a mainstream publishing house, but the author’s writing will require a great deal of work before that happens.

Lowest recommendation.

Examples of bad writing:Spoiler

“The first officer, Officer Cornwall, had a severe allergic reaction to something in our canned food and long story cut short, when we finally managed to shoot him full of adrenaline, he was dead. The second officer, Officer Renwick, died of dehydration when he was out on patrol. Nobody was ever charged or found to be guilty of deliberately killing them. They were just freak accidents.”

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“I get paid too much to live a life of poverty.”

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“Benson Smith was the greatest Commanding Officer ever. Mainly because he didn’t screw things up and got stuff done.”

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“Your fate will be determined by how good your lawyer is at defending your shabby track record.”

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“but I was the prettier sister”

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“I made myself comfortable in one of the outside recliner chairs as I lit up and lost myself in a head full of carcinogenic tobacco.”

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“My assault rifle, was still sitting in the back of the jeep, waiting for someone to utilize its full killing power.”

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“My medication was still beside me, staring back at me with all its chemically balancing goodness.”

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“A black t-shirt that clung to his muscles, black denim pants, and black eyes - this guy was Willy Wonka’s estranged brother.”

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“Call me bias, but you don’t actually look fine.”

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“until shove came to push.”

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“We deal in a lot of pre-and-post-World War Two antiquities.”

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““Pineapple belongs on pizza!” Travis suddenly yelled from another room.”