I had a few issues with this book; The story was quite simplistic (Things where very easy to accomplish and all tied up with a neat bow at the end - they were bringing down a government! unlikely to be easy or neat!!). And I felt that this would have made a fantastic trilogy or small series. The world and characters Lucy Saxon has created was well realised and I could have done with a lot more fleshing out and learning about the world as a whole, the effects on the other countries and the rebuilding of the government. Having said that I know I am not the intended young teen audience but after the complexity of other futuristic / dystopian YA series (Hunger Games / Divergent/ ect.) I cant help but feel that even those audiences now expect more.
Overall I did enjoy it, and the steampunk vibe is a nice change from vampires. I will certainly be looking out for her next book and I'm looking forward to seeing how she develops as a writer. ( )

I stopped at page 90. After Cat miraculously learning to pick pocket, fighting off two guards and outrunning them, I can tell this one isn't for me. There is a lot of awkward dialogue to fit in explanations for the reader and of course Cat is already swooning for the boy. The world sounded cool, but I haven't learned enough about it to want to continue.

Review courtesy of Dark Faerie Tales

Quick & Dirty: Though there were plenty of flaws, I found this novel enjoyable all the same.

Opening Sentence: Rain fell lazily from charcoal-coloured clouds as Catherine Hunter sprinted through darkening streets, her long hair tied in a tight braid and tucked beneath a black knit cap.

The Review:

Catherine is a privileged girl with a government father. She has managed to escape the Collections in her social status, the days that children are stolen away from their families and forced to fight a war. But she doesn’t want to be married for status to some spoiled brat, so she runs from her greedy father and his money to live a life that is not as extravagant, but so much more satisfying. She stows away on a skyship and meets the crew, along with a handsome man named Fox, and begins to realize exactly how much the government has been hiding. And it’s not pretty.

Take Back the Skies was written by a teenager! How cool is that? Being young myself I found that a huge inspiration that publishers would even consider one of such an age. Immediately, this sparked my interest as I traveled into the world that Saxon created. (Oh. And by the way, Lucy Saxon is clearly a pseudonym — I mean, Doctor Who!) I have to say that though I did enjoy my time with the book, I did have problems with both the characters and the way the novel was resolved. I came into the book excited to read something by an eighteen year old, but somewhat wary: not many reviews had been positive and many people had remarked that it wasn’t very interesting to them. With that wariness, my expectations were somewhat lowered, and I ended up having a suffiecient reading experience. That’s probably why I had an easier time with it than others.

The main character, Cat, is much younger than characters I usually deal with. She’s 14, closer to a child than an adult. That being said, I felt that her reactions and bravery were somewhat exaggerated. She’s 14, shouldn’t she be more scared? I wish there had been more of a mention of her shaking, or her palms sweating, or any doubt, but instead she always squares her shoulders after even a second of being frightened. Boom, then she’s fine. Other than that I enjoyed her somewhat spitfire personality and wit. Also, her point of view (and just the writing overall) was very simplistic. If she was excited, than “Cat felt excited”. There was much more telling of emotions than illustrating, if that makes sense.

The love interest had to be one of the more major problems for me, however. Fox and Cat fought more than they talked. Literally, every few pages, Fox would have a sudden mood shift and be spiteful and rude. Not that Cat responded any better. They never held back any hateful, rude thing they could possibly say. If it could be any worse, there was a clear case of insta-love. Those who read my reviews know that I am not a fan of this. As soon as she saw him she couldn’t keep her eyes off him, because he’s apparently soo handsome and intriguing and wow! Once they got together, they could not keep their hands off one another, even in the presence of others, and the fighting suddenly ceased. I’ll admit, I did start to enjoy Fox when he got nicer, but there wasn’t much development on his character, nor Cat’s.

Take Back the Skies, no matter my nitpicking, was an okay read. It was intriguing enough for me to enjoy it. I did end up liking Cat and probably my favorite aspect of the story were the side characters. The world building was rich, if not a little sloppy, and it was refreshing reading a novel that was wrapped up in one book. There were quite a few large twists, but only two that I didn’t see coming. The rest were pretty predictable. As for the ending, I have to say it was unexpected, and haven’t processed it enough to have a large opinion. I loved hearing about the skyships and how there was the storms that were perpetually there, and the lands that resided in the strange world. One thing I can say in this story is that there was lots of action, so it wasn’t a slow read! I will encourage lovers of science fiction who don’t mind a simple writing style or annoying love interests to read this story, as it wasn’t really that bad.

Notable Scene:

She looked around the room for an even smaller place to hide and pulled open the doors of a large oak wardrobe that was bolted to the wall and floor.Heart racing, she pushed aside a pile of clothes at the base of the wardrobe, squeezing herself right into the corner. Covering herself with a long wool coat, she hoped she looked like just another pile of clothes. Catherine laughed shakily to herself. She wrapped her arms around her legs, then leant her chin on her knees. All she could do now was wait.

FTC Advisory: Bloomsbury USA Children’s provided me with a copy of Take Back the Skies. No goody bags, sponsorships, “material connections,” or bribes were exchanged for my review. ( )

After Blythe (Finding Bliss in Books) pitched Take Back the Skies to me as sort of She’s the Man meets Firefly, obviously I HAD to have it. What’s funny is Blythe thought I wouldn’t like the romance but would enjoy everything else, but my issues were more with the writing than the romance. I did find Take Back the Skies engaging and a pleasantly quick read, but I also think it would have benefited from different marketing and some serious tightening of the writing. Saxon’s debut has a lot of promise, but I think it will work better for middle grade audiences than YA as it has been marketed.

Read the full review at A Reader of Fictions. ( )

Warning: epilogue may cause cursing, stabbiness, and bouts of patriarchy blaming.

(Full disclosure: I received a free copy of this book for review from the publisher. Also, the second half of the review contains clearly marked spoilers.)

Oh, Take Back the Skies. I really wanted to fall in love with you: deeply, madly, passionately. You had so much going for you: Space travel by way of grand, masted skyships. Steampunk elements in the form of clockwork mechas. Human experimentation resulting in human-robot hybrid killing machines. A plucky young heroine who crossdresses as a boy so that she can more easily navigate the confines of her patriarchal society. An equally young and plucky author - who cosplays, no less! and has a name right out of the Doctor Who 'verse! - who wrote you as part of NaNoWriMo at the tender age of sixteen.

Your story begins on a promising note. To outsiders, Catherine Hunter is living a charmed life. Born into wealth and privilege, Catherine has it all: a closet brimming with expensive clothes, an extravagant mansion to call home, all the food she can eat (no small luxury in this wartime rationing), and immunity from the Collections (in which the government steals all but the eldest child in a family to power its war machine). But when her physically abusive father promises to betroth her to a boy she can hardly stand - let alone hope to love - Catherine runs away from home...with the blessing of her dying mother, herself the victim of a loveless political marriage.

Dressed in trousers, sporting newly shorn locks, and passing as a commoner boy named "Cat," Catherine slips away to the shipyard, where she boards the best-looking skyship in the joint: the Stormdancer. Luckily, she finds a friendly crew on board; while they ostensibly trade in furs, Harry, Alice, Matt, Ben, and Fox also smuggle goods and sometimes even children evading the Collections. Even when they discover Cat's ruse, they're happy to let her stay; after all, they don't buy into Anglyan aristocracy's sexist notions that boys are "more useful" than girls. So far, so good.

After just a short time traveling with the Stormdancer, Cat comes to discover some painful truths that the Angylan government is hiding from it citizens. First and foremost, there is no war. After the disappearance of the Angylan monarchs eight years prior - King Christopher, Queen Mary, and the young Prince James - there was a brief war between the nations of Tellus - which Angyla lost. Only, the Angylan aristocracy neglected to inform the commoners. Shortly thereafter, they assumed control of the government and began stealing commoner children, supposedly to train and use as soldiers. But if there's no war, what has become of all these disappeared kids?

Contrary to government newscasts, the now-free countries of Tellus - Siberene, Mericus, Dalivia, Kasem, and Erova - are prosperous; it is Anglya which suffers from its isolationism and oppression. During her visit to Siberene, Cat is shocked to find a wealthy and beautiful city teeming with life. She demands answers from her shipmates - and this is where your story starts go to sideways.

While Anglyan traders know full well the falsity of government propaganda, the aristocracy ensures their silence by threatening their families. Though the Stormdancer crew smuggles food and children when they can, somehow doing more - demanding more systemic and permanent changes - never crosses their minds. Until a fifteen-year-old runaway they've known for all of a week suggests it, that is. And once they've all agreed to sabotage the government, they spend exactly one day planning their attack. And it actually works! The disbelief is just too heavy to suspend.

Let's talk about Cat and Fox for a minute. Even though he kind of comes off like a standard "bad boy" at first, at least he's prickly with everyone, and not just Cat. Sure, maybe it's a little puzzling to hear him say that girls are as capable as boys in one breath, and then expend all his energy trying to shield Cat from danger in the next, but this could be attributed to his feelings for her and not her gender specifically. Plus she protests this paternalism at every turn, so that's a good thing. Their romance is cute at first, but escalates at an alarming rate until two kids who just met a week earlier are declaring their undying love for one another. It's a bit much, don't you think?

As others have pointed out, the age difference makes it a bit creepier: Cat is fourteen, going on fifteen, while Fox is seventeen (give or take?). Two or three years isn't much to adults, but teenagers? More like dog years.

Then again, you seem to have a more general problem with properly aging your characters. Cat is a fifteen-year-old who acts and sounds like a twelve-year-old but frequently finds herself in situations befitting a seventeen-year-old+. Fox, too, behaves much younger than his seventeen years. Perhaps that's why their age difference didn't bother me as much as it did other readers: I often pictured these two as the same age. In this vein, you read much more like a middle grade book than YA. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing! Just saying.

And just what is up with your love of monarchies? At every turn, you hold the (hereditary, seemingly absolute) Anglyan monarchy up as preferable to the aristocracy (also apparently heredity and absolute) that currently runs the government - without positing a third way of doing things. For example, why not have Queen Mary run for president instead of re-installing her as the head of an unelected, unaccountable, absolutism form of government? That would tidily wrap up the future King James problem and let Cat off the hook. It must be an English thing that escapes this Merican's understanding. Kings and Queens, how Medieval.

* begin spoilers! *

Which brings us to the ending. Oy, the ending. The epilogue nearly made me chuck you across my living room, you know. We just spent 300+ pages getting to know and love this fierce, independent, brave heroine, and in five tidy pages you erase everything that makes Cat, Cat. The impetus for her fleeing Angyla to begin with was an impending marriage to a boy she didn't love, to fulfill a responsibility she neither wanted nor asked for. The ending brings us full circle, with Cat marrying an arrogant, insensitive, creepy stalker prince for the supposed good of her country. (James? Seriously? He comes off like one of the guys of OK Cupid. A million nos.)

And you don't even provide us with a compelling reason why Princess Cat is the Only Good Thing - or even the Best Thing - for Angyla. At the time of their marriage, Cat and James are just seventeen. Assuming she had James when she was around 20, Mary can't quite be 40 years old yet; and assuming good health and a normal life span, Mary most likely has another 20 or 30 years left of her reign. Methinks that's plenty of time for James to find a suitable wife.

In her internal monologue, Cat insists that she will be a friend to James - nothing more. How then does she expect to continue the monarchy, if not by having his baybeez? Doesn't a childless marriage defeat the purpose of marrying into a monarchy? (I guess Cat could go the turkey baster route, but I doubt that you are that kind of book!)

Why is Angyla Cat's duty? Hasn't she done enough? Sacrificed enough? Her father wasn't even the mastermind behind the whole murderous plot, so that should negate any (misplaced) responsibility she felt to begin with.

And why would the crew of the Stormdancer - who seem to support, if not encourage the marriage - steer Cat so wrong? "He'll take care of you" - wtf, Harry! What happened to the whole equality schtick? I think that Cat has made it clear that she doesn't need a man to take care of her, thank you very much. I just don't buy it.

My greatest disappointment, Take Back the Skies, is that you started off with rather progressive gender politics and then did a complete 180. Up until the last paragraph, I expected you to pull some Runaway Bride style hijinks, but no: despite her protests, you force Cat into a marriage she doesn't want (but presumably will, eventually. Oh Cheesus tell me Cat doesn't fall for James in the sequel!) I picked you up so that I could watch Cat take back the skies - not the throne!

http://www.easyvegan.info/2014/06/18/take-back-the-skies-by-lucy-saxon/ ( )