Goodreads

“They only worshiped seven gods in the Tholosian Empire: Letum, Bel, Rem, Salutem, Phobos, Algea, and Soter. Death, War, Honor, Survival, Fear, Agony, and Salvation. There was no place in their pantheon for Mercy.”

Release Date: August 4th, 2020

Genre(s): Young adult, sci-fi, space opera, LGBT

Publisher: DAW

Pages: 448

Rating:⭐️⭐️⭐️

Synopsis

Seven Devils is the first in a science-fiction duology. It follows seven resistance fighters, starting with Eris, who thought faking her death left her ties to the empire behind. When her and Cloelia are assigned to a dangerous mission to retrieve intelligence from a cargo ship, they learn how they can bring down the empire once and for all. But time is ticking to save civilization from the empire, and the lives of millions are in their hands.

Review

I’m a big fan of space operas, so when I heard about Seven Devils, I knew I wanted to read it. Space operas are so great because there’s not only a multilayered story going on, but there’s so much character development and bonding going on with the crew. Seven Devils definitely had that, and also came with some interesting and unique character backstories. This was an interesting way to introduce conflict between characters and add to the dimension to the story as a whole.

Despite this, I did struggle a bit with the way that this was implemented. Seven Devils not only has multiple POVs, but it also switches between past and present, and the past chapters all occur at different times. This got very confusing in the beginning, but things started to come together further along in the book. I think that multi-person POVs are very doable, but I think it’s much harder to be thrown into them along with the different time perspectives at the beginning of the book. And while the number of POVs increase as new characters are introduced, I do wish we got a little more time with the first characters per chapter before having so many switches in perspective.

I do wish we got a little bit more from the worldbuilding as well. There were a couple of elements, while small, that led to some distractions while I was reading. For example, there’s a set of swear words used in this world, but they also use regular swears. On the other hand, I think  that the character backstories did contribute to the vastness of the world itself.

Once I was able to settle in with the story this one has so many unique elements to it! Each character has such different histories and the way their diverse stories come together really made this book (even though I wish it was done a bit differently!). The characters have pretty unique skillsets as well which made the advancement of the plot much more interesting and realistic.

It is worth noting for Seven Devils that, while it is marketed as YA, there are older characters and this is probably more of a crossover novel. It will work well for both young adults and adults, but because of the language and violence it’s not as suited for younger teens.

All in all, I thought Seven Devils was a pretty unique space opera! While I didn’t like some elements of the storytelling with this book, I was eventually able piece together all of the varying storylines of the characters. I’m definitely curious for the second book as well, which will complete the duology.