Review: Containment by Caryn Lix

Posted by Jessi (Geo) on August 30, 2019 | 0 Comments


Review: Containment by Caryn LixContainment by Caryn Lix
Series: Sanctuary #2
Published by Simon Pulse (8.6.2019)
Genres: Science Fiction
Format: Hardcover, 496 pages
Source: From Publisher


2.5 Stars

Ex-Omnistellar prison guard Kenzie and her superpowered friends barely made it off Sanctuary alive. Now they’re stuck in a stolen alien ship with nowhere to go and no one to help them. Kenzie is desperate for a plan, but she doesn’t know who to trust anymore. Everyone has their own dark secrets: Omnistellar, her parents, even Cage. Worse still, she’s haunted by memories of the aliens who nearly tore her to shreds—and forced her to accidentally kill one of the Sanctuary prisoners, Matt.

When Kenzie intercepts a radio communication suggesting that more aliens are on their way, she knows there’s only one choice: They must turn themselves in to Omnistellar and destroy the ship before the aliens follow the signal straight to them. Because if the monstrous creatures who attacked Sanctuary reach Earth, then it’s game over for humanity.

What Kenzie doesn’t know is that the aliens aren’t the only ones on the hunt. Omnistellar has put a bounty on Kenzie’s head—and the question is whether the aliens or Omnistellar get to her first.

My thoughts

In case you missed my review for Sanctuary, I absolutely loved the first book! It was gripping, the aliens were chilling, and I loved the dark Alien-esque feel it had going for it. It was a space horror through and through and kept you on the edge of your seat.

This book? Not so much. There was some major Second Book Syndrome going on here. The parts that I loved so much about the first book – namely, the scary aliens – were almost missing from this book. There were things happening but it didn’t feel like anything was really happening, if that makes any sense? The first half felt very redundant. It felt like there wasn’t much plot except “stop the ship’s signal from reaching the aliens.” I was actually quite bored for the majority beginning, and the middle really dragged. There was such a buildup in the beginning leading up to the inevitable “aliens receive ship’s signal” that it was almost painful. They kept talking about the aliens and what would happen if they got the signal, and I desperately wanted the aliens to come back and spice things up. I missed that from the first book!

Sadly, I didn’t get what I wanted until the last third of the book. So it didn’t get exciting for me until three hundred pages into the book. That’s a lot of pages to not grab my full attention. Like I said, I was pretty bored until the real action started. I didn’t really care about what was happening until that point, because it just felt like a bunch of running, getting caught, and escaping (followed by more running) and that was the extent of events leading up to the aliens returning.

Things I didn’t like:

  • Slow pacing despite things happening
  • Lack of plot or anything interesting happening
  • Redundancy of events (running, getting caught, escaping)
  • Lack of connection to characters (as compared to the first book)
  • The “twist” (see below spoiler)
View Spoiler »

Things I liked:

  • ALIENS!
  • X-Men feel with the characters’ powers (especially the compounded powers!)
  • Um….aliens?

Okay, that looks bad, doesn’t it? It’s not that I didn’t like the book, it’s just that I felt massively underwhelmed and disappointed after loving Sanctuary so much. The sequel was definitely missing the magic of the first book. On the bright side, though, it was actually a pretty fast read despite my lack of interest.

Overall Assessment

Plot: 3/5
Premise: 4.5/5
Writing style: 4/5
Originality: 3.5/5
Characters: 3/5
World-building: 3.5/5
Pace: 2/5
Feels: 1/5
Cover: 4/5
Overall rating: 3/5

Jessi (Geo)

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