Containment by Caryn Lix Review

Rating: 3 Stars

Publication: September 10th, 2019

Sanctuary #2

Genre: YA Scifi

Format: Egalley

Goodreads

Summary:

⭐Sanctuary Spoilers⭐

As a citizen of Omnistellar Concepts, the most powerful corporation in the solar system, Kenzie has trained her entire life to become an elite guard on Sanctuary, Omnistellar’s space prison for superpowered teens too dangerous for Earth. As a junior guard, she was excited to prove herself to her company, but then a routine drill went sideways, Kenzie was taken hostage by rioting prisoners, her mother was more concerned with protocol then saving her, and aliens attacked. With people disappearing or being killed Kenzie teamed up with her captors in order to survive. Now they may have escaped the Sanctuary space station, but Kenzie and her new friends are far from safe. With nowhere to go and no one to help them tensions start to boil over when Kenzie discovers more aliens are on their way.

My Thoughts:

After the events of the first book our main character Kenzie is left on edge with an extreme fear that aliens might be hiding around every corner. She still gets flashback from the attacks on Sanctuary (what a weird name for a prison). With everything going she hasnt had the chance to come clean about Matt and the guilt has been eating at her. Her reactions were realistic, but I personally prefer reading from a more confident main characters point of view over one who has a lot of self doubt. If the emotional turmoil is a huge part of the story than I tend to stay pretty detached. I feel like a lot of her survival was due to luck and outside forces more than her own planning and ability to out maneuver her enemies, but she's brave and determined Ill give her that.

Theres some romance, but with everything that's happened we dont spend much time on it. Kenzie and Cage are unsure about their feelings and the development is very slow. Totally understandable, but I never found myself shipping them together. I liked the friendships between Kenzie and the former prisoners. It makes sense that the danger brought them closer together and resulted in some great found family vibes. Theres a nice sibling relationship between Cage and his twin sister Rune. Mia is totally the fierce type of character I love reading about so she would have made a more compelling main character for me personally. I also liked the new mysterious pirate character with his surprising past and questionable motives. The little snippets of the aliens communicating gave an exciting sense of danger.

Kenzie and her new group of friends are all just trying to stop the aliens from reaching humanity and staying ahead of the corporations set on capturing them. Despite the plot being full of action and having a quick pace I wasnt very motivated to keep reading, but when I did manage to pick it up I found it to be an easy and entertaining read. I think I was just in a weird reading mood. I had a difficult time wrapping my head around some of the antagonists decisions, but I loved the unexpected reveals. I also enjoyed getting more of the side characters backstory, but we didnt get as much character developpement as I would have liked. The themes were similar to many other dystopians with many people being brain washed and the few fighting back while dealing with trauma.

The greedy and shady corporations gave this book a dystopian feel that didnt do much for me. I did enjoy the deadly aliens and how they tie into the last couple generations developping powers. The wide variety of different abilities and how they seemed to be growing was pretty awesome. We have invisibility, healing, incredible speed, electronic manipulation, pyrokenitics, telekenises, and language comprehension, among others. I thought the criminal space station was an interesting setting since I enjoy exploring the darker side of humanity. The writing had a few tropy lines that werent very authentic, but they might change in the final copy. I still have a feeling many readers will really enjoy this sequel and Im always happy to see Canadian authors come out with YA fanatsy and scifi books.

Diversity: PTSD MC, Asian SC & Muslim SC

Trigger/Content Warnings: PTSD Flashbacks - Violence - Murder - Confinement - Explosions - Guns - Mentions of Past Parent & Sibling Deaths

*This book was received for an honest review