Tankborn (Tankborn, #1) in Multiculturalism in YA,Fantasy, Sci FI,Paranormal and fun books ;p

Jul 03, 2014 Emotonal Reads rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: no-hea, hero-with-integrity, not-bw-wm, young-adult, not-smutty, not-sexually-insulting, non-interracial, part-of-series, fantasy, sci-fi

I wouldn't call this interracial, everyone seem to be of the same color, at least the couples, It's only the shade of the individual that separated them from GEN to True-born. It was all different shades of black.

I really enjoyed this book, especially the idea of how certain humans were created and how they used that to make an anarchy.
It did put me in mind of slavery but as with slavery there were alot of higher class people willing to fight for the lower. It did piss me off alot.

I would love t ...more

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Jun 01, 2015 Jamilla rated it really liked it

Shelves: favorites, female-character-ftw

Such a riveting story! Definitely recommended reading!

—-felt like a re-read—-

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Aug 31, 2012 Sasha added it · review of another edition

Shelves: young-adult, science-fiction, fantasy, poc, dnf

I made it about halfway through Tankborn before I decided that I could go no further. I was really disappointed with how I felt about this book because I had made a promise to myself that in 2013 I would make more of a conscious effort as a WOC to read books with main characters that are people of color. Tankborn had been on my TBR list ever since I saw the cover, which quite clearly singled it out as a YA science fiction novel with a young WOC as the main protagonist—something exceedingly and d I made it about halfway through Tankborn before I decided that I could go no further. I was really disappointed with how I felt about this book because I had made a promise to myself that in 2013 I would make more of a conscious effort as a WOC to read books with main characters that are people of color. Tankborn had been on my TBR list ever since I saw the cover, which quite clearly singled it out as a YA science fiction novel with a young WOC as the main protagonist—something exceedingly and depressingly rare in the sci-fi/YA/fantasy genres. I found myself equally as excited to read the book when I got ahold of its description; the book seemed to me, at least, to be an interesting social commentary set in a fictional, entirely unique world. Unfortunately I was left quite disappointed when I began reading.

Tankborn wasn’t for me. I had the singularly most difficult time trying to get into the story; something about the book kept both my feet firmly planted in my own world, reluctant to venture into the written one. It might have had something to do with the target audience age, which was admittedly a bit younger than I anticipated; the main character is 13 or 14, maybe, and the writing is a bit simpler to adhere to that age group and younger. Also, there was the problem of the jargon and the world-building, which was done so matter-of-factly and with such little exposition that I felt two steps behind, trying to extrapolate what the author meant when she was talking about certain things and didn’t give much of an explanation.

The characters themselves were difficult to sympathize with. I felt like I didn’t really get much of a sense of who Kayla and Mishalla were—I often mixed the two up between the switches in their perspectives, which just goes to show how distinct from each other they weren’t—because the author does so much exposition in the beginning of the book that by the time the storyline slows down enough to give some character development, you don’t really care what happens to them because you haven’t become attached. Sometimes this technique works but in this case the author took a gamble that for me didn’t pay off.

I appreciate what Ms. Sandler is trying to do with her book: create strong female characters that are people of color. However, I think that that in and of itself was not enough, for this book was severely lacking in the requisites necessary to engage a reader fully in such a new and ambitious type of story. I really wish that I was more taken with this book—certain parts of the plot and the writing made me see that it really could be something I might enjoy under different circumstances. Maybe in the future I’ll revisit it, but for now, I’m declaring it a DNF.

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