Then There Was One by Wendy Cross
Apr. 21st, 2024 11:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quippeThe Blurb On The Back:
Let the games begin.
Every inhabitant in the Quadrant knows about The Pinnacle, a reality TV contest set on a remote planet with a five million cash prize. For three desperate entrants, winning would mean the world.
Right girl BEX can finally leave her broken family behind.
For politician’s son ZANE, it’s his only opportunity to save his mother.
And it’s outcast RAYA’S last chance at a better life.
But as the competition starts, the contestants are quick to discover that this year’s game has unscripted and DEADLY consequences.
And the only thing they’re truly competing for, is SURVIVAL.
It’s over 400 years in the future. Mankind has colonised the universe with new societies spotted on planets in a galactic area known as the Cael Quadrant.
Bexley 'Bex' Ryker lives a privileged life as the eldest child of a wealthy businessman on Rikas, the wealthiest planet in the super wealthy Vaurus Sector. But Bex is also notorious on her home world for a planet so shocking that her father has disinherited her from taking over his business and cut her from her trust fund.
Raya Quinn lives a harder life in a mining community on the Moons in the Inops Sector where her only companion is a dog called Zircon and they have to thieve, cheat and fight in order to stay alive.
Zane Wilder’s father, Reddin, was a powerful and respected councilman on Rikas, but since his death, he and his mother have been struggling to find the income needed to remain in Rikas society.
So when all three receive an invitation to participate in the 250th series of The Pinnacle (a Survivor-style game show that is the most popular in the Quadrant and where the winner gets 5 million cranes and a full university scholarship) they are all desperate to go. They make their way to El Nar, where they meet producer Hunter Russo and the 7 other contestants before the teleport to the planet where they must form alliances, win tasks and immunity until one winner takes all.
But once they are at the site of the show, they soon discover that nothing is as it seems. All 10 competitors have a common secret and someone is determined that they will each pay for it …
Wendy Cross’s debut YA SF crime novel mixes AND THEN THERE WERE NONE by Agatha Christie with SURVIVOR but while the pacing is fast, it cannot make up for very thin characterisation (including of the 3 POV characters), equally thin world building (with Cross heavily dependent on mentioning an aspect of this universe when she needs to explain a twist) and some heavily foreshadowed twists so that as a result the novel just didn’t work for me.
The novel is told from the alternating points of view of Zane, Bex and Raya. This is part of the reason why the pacing is actually the best thing about the book because it keeps the action going and expands out on the plot, providing backstory to each character and their circumstances and the world building but also demonstrating how each of the narrators views each other, which does create some tension. However the flip side of it is that it also highlights how thin the characterisation and world building is. However you try to spin it, both Zane and Bex are essentially poor little rich kids and Raya is little more than a poor kid who is forced by circumstances to take drastic actions for survival. Given what you learn about each character, I was hoping for a bit more self-reflection and depth but this doesn’t happen for Bex or Zane and although there is more there for Raya, it doesn’t get to grow or develop.
The 7 other characters in the competition are really little more than names and one characteristic - e.g. Winston is smart and chatty, Evie is a cold psychopath. It’s partly because of this lack of depth that I didn’t feel any sympathy or anything when the killing starts but it’s not helped by the fact that there’s no discussion or self-reflection by any of the characters about the fact that they have all committed a deliberate murder or, at least, acted in a way that resulted in death. This is a shame because again, giving some kind of consideration to the difference between cold blooded deliberate murder and neglect or accident would have built out both characters but also the scene when the antagonist is revealed and there is a brief discussion about why they are doing it.
This brings me to the fact that it is far too easy to guess who the antagonist is so when the twist is revealed, it is not a surprise. Indeed, a number of twists are all foreshadowed far too early and too heavily and it highlights the weakness of the world building because to explain why characters have not noticed or put together some events, Cross has to suddenly introduce a SF element that explains it and I found that deeply frustrating.
Ultimately, I can’t say that this book worked for me or that I particularly enjoyed it. However, I think that some of that is because Cross ties herself up in knots by putting the crime thriller format into a SF world and it’s an unnecessary complication. I’d be interested to see what Cross can do with a straightforward contemporary YA crime thriller and on that basis, would check out what she writes next.
The Verdict:
Wendy Cross’s debut YA SF crime novel mixes AND THEN THERE WERE NONE by Agatha Christie with SURVIVOR but while the pacing is fast, it cannot make up for very thin characterisation (including of the 3 POV characters), equally thin world building (with Cross heavily dependent on mentioning an aspect of this universe when she needs to explain a twist) and some heavily foreshadowed twists so that as a result the novel just didn’t work for me.
THEN THERE WAS ONE was released in the United Kingdom on 1st February 2024. Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.
Every inhabitant in the Quadrant knows about The Pinnacle, a reality TV contest set on a remote planet with a five million cash prize. For three desperate entrants, winning would mean the world.
For politician’s son ZANE, it’s his only opportunity to save his mother.
And it’s outcast RAYA’S last chance at a better life.
But as the competition starts, the contestants are quick to discover that this year’s game has unscripted and DEADLY consequences.
And the only thing they’re truly competing for, is SURVIVAL.
It’s over 400 years in the future. Mankind has colonised the universe with new societies spotted on planets in a galactic area known as the Cael Quadrant.
Bexley 'Bex' Ryker lives a privileged life as the eldest child of a wealthy businessman on Rikas, the wealthiest planet in the super wealthy Vaurus Sector. But Bex is also notorious on her home world for a planet so shocking that her father has disinherited her from taking over his business and cut her from her trust fund.
Raya Quinn lives a harder life in a mining community on the Moons in the Inops Sector where her only companion is a dog called Zircon and they have to thieve, cheat and fight in order to stay alive.
Zane Wilder’s father, Reddin, was a powerful and respected councilman on Rikas, but since his death, he and his mother have been struggling to find the income needed to remain in Rikas society.
So when all three receive an invitation to participate in the 250th series of The Pinnacle (a Survivor-style game show that is the most popular in the Quadrant and where the winner gets 5 million cranes and a full university scholarship) they are all desperate to go. They make their way to El Nar, where they meet producer Hunter Russo and the 7 other contestants before the teleport to the planet where they must form alliances, win tasks and immunity until one winner takes all.
But once they are at the site of the show, they soon discover that nothing is as it seems. All 10 competitors have a common secret and someone is determined that they will each pay for it …
Wendy Cross’s debut YA SF crime novel mixes AND THEN THERE WERE NONE by Agatha Christie with SURVIVOR but while the pacing is fast, it cannot make up for very thin characterisation (including of the 3 POV characters), equally thin world building (with Cross heavily dependent on mentioning an aspect of this universe when she needs to explain a twist) and some heavily foreshadowed twists so that as a result the novel just didn’t work for me.
The novel is told from the alternating points of view of Zane, Bex and Raya. This is part of the reason why the pacing is actually the best thing about the book because it keeps the action going and expands out on the plot, providing backstory to each character and their circumstances and the world building but also demonstrating how each of the narrators views each other, which does create some tension. However the flip side of it is that it also highlights how thin the characterisation and world building is. However you try to spin it, both Zane and Bex are essentially poor little rich kids and Raya is little more than a poor kid who is forced by circumstances to take drastic actions for survival. Given what you learn about each character, I was hoping for a bit more self-reflection and depth but this doesn’t happen for Bex or Zane and although there is more there for Raya, it doesn’t get to grow or develop.
The 7 other characters in the competition are really little more than names and one characteristic - e.g. Winston is smart and chatty, Evie is a cold psychopath. It’s partly because of this lack of depth that I didn’t feel any sympathy or anything when the killing starts but it’s not helped by the fact that there’s no discussion or self-reflection by any of the characters about the fact that they have all committed a deliberate murder or, at least, acted in a way that resulted in death. This is a shame because again, giving some kind of consideration to the difference between cold blooded deliberate murder and neglect or accident would have built out both characters but also the scene when the antagonist is revealed and there is a brief discussion about why they are doing it.
This brings me to the fact that it is far too easy to guess who the antagonist is so when the twist is revealed, it is not a surprise. Indeed, a number of twists are all foreshadowed far too early and too heavily and it highlights the weakness of the world building because to explain why characters have not noticed or put together some events, Cross has to suddenly introduce a SF element that explains it and I found that deeply frustrating.
Ultimately, I can’t say that this book worked for me or that I particularly enjoyed it. However, I think that some of that is because Cross ties herself up in knots by putting the crime thriller format into a SF world and it’s an unnecessary complication. I’d be interested to see what Cross can do with a straightforward contemporary YA crime thriller and on that basis, would check out what she writes next.
The Verdict:
Wendy Cross’s debut YA SF crime novel mixes AND THEN THERE WERE NONE by Agatha Christie with SURVIVOR but while the pacing is fast, it cannot make up for very thin characterisation (including of the 3 POV characters), equally thin world building (with Cross heavily dependent on mentioning an aspect of this universe when she needs to explain a twist) and some heavily foreshadowed twists so that as a result the novel just didn’t work for me.
THEN THERE WAS ONE was released in the United Kingdom on 1st February 2024. Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.
