Brightly Burning

I love Jane Eyre, and I also love Sci-fi, so I was really excited to read this book. It was just okay. I was more disappointed than anything, especially by the lack of depth in the characters.

I loved this book! Not only is Jane Eyre my favorite classic, but I loved the twist it had with sci-fi and other characters to love! I highly recommend to anyone who is a fan of Jane Eyre and doesn't mind it taking place in space!

"Someone told me that when we die, we are released out there, turned into something burning and brilliant." ~ Alexa Donne, Brightly Burning An ice age has struck the earth after a supervolcano erupted. Mankind fled to earth’s orbit in spaceships, hoping to wait until the earth is once more habitable. Stella Ainsley resides on one of the poorer spaceships, The Stalwart, filled with farmers who feed the many orbiting ships around the earth. At the age of 17, Stella is an orphaned girl who makes her keep by teaching young children and part-time in engineering work. She is restless though, wanting to move on from The Stalwart and be employed solely as a governess. She is hired on to work as a governess and auxiliary engineer on The Rochester. Soon she meets Hugo Fairfax, the captain of the ship and Stella becomes more comfortable in her new home, but there appears to be a mystery aboard the ship. Stella takes it upon herself to discover what is truly going on aboard The Rochester. Brightly Burning by Alexa Donne can best be described as Jane Eyre but in space. I read Jane Eyre in my senior year of high school, and while I don’t remember all the details of the book, I remember the main points of the story. I do remember that I quite enjoyed Jane Eyre though, so Brightly Burning sounded right up my alley! Unfortunately, I was sorely disappointed. It was a genuine struggle trying to read this book and I really hated it. The worst part of this book was the fact that it was Jane Eyre in space. Most of the main story points were hit in Brightly Burning but they were done roughly. There were so many plot holes and I was left confused by how things came about. The story takes place an unspecified amount of time in our future, but what we do know is these spaceship colonies have been in earth’s orbit for 210 years. Despite being in the future, somehow society has regressed back to the Victorian Era. People rarely live past the age of 35. If you’re not married by 17, then you’re a spinster. There are governesses and chambermaids. Drawing rooms and pianofortes are common. It’s odd for women to hold certain jobs. And the strangest thing I still struggle to wrap my head around even after finishing the book is the women are wearing Victorian dresses and the young girls are wearing pinafores. In space. Dresses. In space. Corsets. In space. Really I should just leave the review there and not continue. But I’m going to anyway. I really didn’t understand the writing style for this book. The characters were very formal and then very relaxed. It felt like it was being forced into Victorian Era formalities, but then there’d be moments where the characters realized they were in the future and there was no need for formalities. Frex. Gotta love made-up swear words. I really wish writers would stop doing this. Either include the swear word or don’t. I don’t need your made-up jargon. If you don’t want to go to the extreme of saying “fuck” then just use “damn.” It’s not that bad, I promise. On top of this, there were lots of weird phrases thrown into the book that are commonplace when speaking in real life, but you don’t see them in novels. Phrases that really took me out of the experience were “cool as a cucumber,” “had it down pat,” “going to town,” and (my favorite) “bored out of my gourd.” I realize this novel is a YA. But at the same time, it’s a YA. Not a middle grade. The characters of Brightly Burning definitely weren’t as strong as the original Jane Eyre characters. Stella was a boring 18-year-old girl who didn’t do anything except thirst over every single boy who stands in front of her. I can’t emphasize just how thirsty this girl is, there are so many comments about how attractive or handsome each of the boys are. She draws and reads and kind of briefly teaches kids but does she really? No, not really. Hugo Fairfax plays Rochester. And again, he was boring. All the other characters in The Rochester warn Stella about Hugo’s rude behavior. Xiao, the First Officer, even apologizes for Hugo being drunk and telling Stella twice not to bring up his parents to him, otherwise, he’ll react poorly. I’ll be completely honest, Hugo was a really nice character. He’s definitely not Rochester. Not even a hint of Rochester. He’s sweet and interested in Stella’s story and is really nice to his sister (Adele played by Jessa). I am baffled by these contradictory descriptions and actions. He’s not a bad guy at all. Even the awful, terrible sin Hugo “committed” is negligible when compared to Rochester lying about his insane wife. And committed is a loose term considering he actually did nothing wrong. It was his dad. And I’m going to say something a bit controversial considering the modern era, but Hugo should not have been aged down to 19. He became a ship captain at the age of 14. He doesn’t act like a 19-year-old. He acts like an adult. I understand he had to step up and take responsibilities early on in his life, but both he and Stella don’t act their age at all. It feels like they were aged down to make the book YA. And if you’re not okay with the original Jane/Rochester age difference (which is totally understandable), just age them up a bit and make it an adult book. There’s no point dedicating paragraphs to the side characters. Just like the main characters, they are flat. Character racial representation felt very tokenized. There was even a point in the book where a character is revealed as gay, but I cringed at the way it was done: “Carmichael comes from the Lady Liberty—school records are standard. He’s gay, and yes, you should be as disturbed as I was that that was in his fleet record” (Brightly Burning, 38%). The crazy woman in this novel isn’t Hugo’s wife (you know, because he’s 19), but rather his mother. I was okay with this until I found out why she was crazy. This is a bit spoilery, but it just makes me furious. His mother had panic attacks. His father, a medical scientist, decided to give her experimental drugs to try to calm her which caused psychosis. I don’t really have much more to say about that, it just infuriates me that this is the reasoning behind the mad woman. There was no worldbuilding in this book. Well, none is a strong word. We are taught about the ice age and why people are in space, but it felt shoved in the book as science facts. There were some really strange things, like the life expectancy being shortened. One thing I found really peculiar was how the poorer ships didn’t have access to many digitized books. A database filled with books wouldn’t be a hard ask in a futuristic setting. I personally have a Kindle Paperwhite 10th Generation with 8GB which fits in the ballpark of 2000-3000 books. And what makes this digitization even stranger is the governing body of these spaceship colonies didn’t deem it necessary to conserve The Library of Congress, so Hugo’s ancestors keep that database that contains “documents, maps, books, and the Old Earth Internet” on their private ship. Why would this not be a concern to preserve this information for the general public and why only The Library of Congress? So many questions are left unanswered and this book makes me angry the longer I think about it. I’m just going to wrap up this review. I was going to give this book 3 stars, but the longer I thought about it and the more I wrote of this review, I’ve decided to just knock it all the way down to 1 star. I’m just incredibly disappointed in this book and really angry no one pulled up these plot holes to Donne. While this book is a standalone novel, there is another book written by Donne in this universe, but I’ll be honest, I don’t want to touch anything else in this universe. I am afraid there’s nothing that can really redeem Brightly Burning and I fear that reading anything else in this universe will just piss me off. Perhaps it’s a good book if you can completely suspend belief and haven’t actually read and watched Jane Eyre, but it’s not for me and I wouldn’t recommend wasting your time on it. Check out more of my reviews on my blog: https://erynbradshaw.wordpress.com

I'm sad I didn't enjoy the ending as much as the beginning. It was still a very wonderful pick me up after not really finishing something for a while!

Review 2: Disclaimer: I own this book! Love it! It’s also signed by the author. Off-topic, sorry! Rating: 5/5 Publication Date: May 1, 2018 Genre: YA Sci-Fi Recommended Age: 15+ (violence, scares, romance) Publisher: HMH Books for Young Readers Pages: 394 Amazon Link Synopsis: Seventeen-year-old Stella Ainsley wants just one thing: to go somewhere—anywhere—else. Her home is a floundering spaceship that offers few prospects, having been orbiting an ice-encased Earth for two hundred years. When a private ship hires her as a governess, Stella jumps at the chance. The captain of the Rochester, nineteen-year-old Hugo Fairfax, is notorious throughout the fleet for being a moody recluse and a drunk. But with Stella he’s kind. But the Rochester harbors secrets: Stella is certain someone is trying to kill Hugo, and the more she discovers, the more questions she has about his role in a conspiracy threatening the fleet. Review: Oh wow this book was just as fantastic as the first time I read it! I loved the world building and how Donne thought up how life would work in a world where we’re in space because of an Ice Age (it’s a very real threat still). I love the characters and how she took the original plot from Jane Eyre and somehow transformed it into a modern (futuristic?) tale for today’s generation. I also love the writing! I would definitely have loved a continuation of the tale ala 100 Days, but from how the author left it off is fine with me. I also thought the commentary on class and the different socio-economic impacts of certain factors was great. My only issues are that, from my watch-through of a quick summary of Jane Eyre, that there wasn’t a lot about the Red Room and they changed some things from the original tale, but the changes, in my opinion, were well done and made for a fantastic retelling of a piece of classic literature. Verdict: A must read if you like Jane Eyre or if you like Space (or BOTH!) Review 1: Rating: 5/5 Genre: YA Sci-Fi/Romance/Dystopian/Retelling Recommended Age: 15+ (violence, sexual references, dystopian like horrors, and ice age) Pages: 400 Amazon Link Author Website Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book as an e-arc on NetGalley. Thanks! All opinions are my own. Synopsis: Stella Ainsley leaves poverty behind when she quits her engineering job aboard the Stalwart to become a governess on a private ship. On the Rochester, there’s no water ration, more books than one person could devour in a lifetime, and an AI who seems more friend than robot. But no one warned Stella that the ship seems to be haunted, nor that it may be involved in a conspiracy that could topple the entire interstellar fleet. Surrounded by mysteries, Stella finds her equal in the brooding but kind, nineteen-year-old Captain Hugo. When several attempts on his life spark more questions than answers, and the beautiful Bianca Ingram appears at Hugo’s request, his unpredictable behavior causes Stella’s suspicions to mount. Without knowing who to trust, Stella must decide whether to follow her head or her heart. Alexa Donne’s lush and enthralling reimagining of the classic Jane Eyre, set among the stars, will seduce and beguile you So… I don’t read synopses and I shortly found out after I started reading this book that it was a Jane Eyre retelling. I’m one of those horrible people that hasn’t read many classics (well, I’ve not read the popular classics) but since I was somewhat familiar with Jane Eyre from a YouTube video explaining the highlights of it, I felt I was in a good position to read it. Surprisingly though I didn’t need my limited knowledge of the book to understand what was going on. The book was written so well and so unique given its retelling status. The book didn’t feel like a retelling and unless you were either familiar with the book you wouldn’t notice it was a retelling. The book also expanded from the original story so much and it really made the story its own. The characters in the book were very well developed and what you think is going to happen is completely the opposite of what does. The book did well at doing away at some of the tired old YA clichés. The book also had so many twists and turns that you can’t tell where the book is going. Hands down, one of my favorite Sci-Fi’s to date. However, I did think that the book could have expanded more on the world building a bit, but once again what we got in the book was really well done and adequate. I need more though and I really hope we get a companion novel to this book. Maybe a Pride and Prejudice retelling? Little Women? White Fang? Wait… Verdict: Jane Eyre in space is cool. If only Charlotte Bronte thought of it.

*to clarify, none of the main characters are LGBT+ but some side characters are overtly mentioned as such. I’ve never read Jane Eyre which this is apparently supposed to be a sci-fi version of, but I really liked this book. Victorian class systems in space was a really fun concept, and we got lots of details about different ships and jobs. I thought that most of the characters individually where well written but that two relationships (between Stella and 2/3 of her love interests) fell a bit flat for me. Stella is a very caring person, but for humanity as a whole which doesn’t really show through in her one-on-one interactions. It’s hard to imagine her loving anyone even though she claims too, which made these two relationships feel very off to me. This didn’t take away from my enjoyment of the plot as a whole though.

*I WAS SENT A PHYSICAL ARC IN RETURN FOR AN HONEST REVIEW* I would like to thank HMHteen publicity for approving my request and sending me this beautiful book. I couldn’t be any more grateful, and I am so happy to finally be posting this review. When first hearing that this book is a Jane Eyre retelling, just in space, it’s easy to become interested. However, having not read Jane Eyre, it’s still pretty easy to see where the classical elements of an old era have been twisted in. Brightly Burning first takes place on a poverty ship called the Stalwart. It’s constantly having mechanical issues, and it lacks water, air, spare parts, food, and medical supplies. This causes a little bit of panic for the main character Stella Ainsley. She is an engineer who is constantly called down to fix things, but she is also a teacher. Throughout the book, it’s evident that she prefers her job of teaching over engineering. Stella becomes easily annoyed by the fact that she is called in instead of her friend and co-worker Jon Karlson—nicknamed Karlson—whose uncle is the captain of the ship. “We both know you aren’t applying anywhere else as an engineer. You hate the job, despite being very good at it—and not at all humble, I might add…” From this quote, it is learned that Stella has been applying for teaching positions on other ships. Because of her concern with the Stalwart’s systems failing so often, she is desperate to get off of the ship. It doesn’t help that Karlson is constantly talking about how the Stalwart will be forced to try reentering Earth. This is where it is made known in Stella’s class of students that a super volcano had erupted before their time, causing the planet to fall into an ice age that is expected to last over two hundred years, or so they hope. Then, the last straw happens. The engine and auxiliary systems failed, forcing Stella to leave her class of students in the hands of her good friend George. Though it takes her a bit, she fixes the problems and ends up recuperating with everyone at lunch. It is a day or two after the systems failing when she gets her final response back for a teaching job aboard the Rochester. She’d been accepted, and she would be leaving quickly after. While flying toward her soon to be home ship, Stella learns many things. For one, the Rochester orbits the moon, unlike all the other ships that orbit Earth. On top of that, the ship is rumored to be haunted. Multiple teachers had left the ship in fear for their lives. Throughout this book chills, tears, smiles, and squeals have been awarded. Alexa Donne has thoroughly impressed with her debut book. Fans of Marissa Meyer and Amie Kaufman will devour this and be left craving for more. For this, I rate this book 5/5 stars.

For a full review, check out my blog, https://storiedadventures.blog *I received an e-arc from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review* Jane Eyre in space? Heck yes! Have I read Jane Eyre? Nope! But this book made me want to! This book was up and down for me. There were parts I sped read through because I didn't really care, and parts I took my time with for fear of missing information. The characters were kind of boring but the plot was very interesting. The writing was okay. Not the best, not the worst. I did NOT like the fact that the author didn't address the alcoholism more. Hugo is an alcoholic and to my knowledge didn't stop being one. Unless it was implied and I missed it, the author should have made that a stronger plot point.