I wanted to know more about the government, the history, the overall culture, how they interact and coexist under normal circumstances. The individual planets are detailed fairly well, but you only see three of them. The readers are plunged into the mystery almost immediately, without much knowledge about the characters or the civilization. It’s not well-written enough to pull off imitating other series because it doesn’t really provide enough of itself for balance. Oh, and a rogue thirteenth civilization that is largely believed to be myth is coming to destroy everything.Īll of this would be fine - books borrow from each other all the time, shared elements are everywhere in literature - except that Russell does not spend all that much time exploring the world of Zodiac. Each planet operates largely independently with a central government. Each planet is focused on one core trait, similar to the varying factions in Divergent. Each planet is named after the one of the signs of the zodiac. Zodiac takes place in a galaxy with twelve planets, much like the twelve districts of The Hunger Games’ Panem.

If the world of Zodiac looks slightly familiar, it’s probably because you’ve already seen it before in various incarnations. Rho, the newly-named Guardian of the planet Cancer, and her advisor, Mathias, travel from planet to planet, attempting to warn the other systems while at the same time avoiding attacks from an unknown and extremely hostile entity. Rhoma - or Rho, as she is called - and her bandmates are some of the only survivors of a brutal attack on one of their planet’s moons, an attack that Rho saw coming but was convinced was not real. The premise is intriguing, the universe is interesting, but I found it to be more style than substance. Zodiac attracted me because I will always be the girl who watched one of the Star Wars movies every day for a week, and I am forever searching for YA novels that take place in space.

In the case of Rhoma Grace, the heroine in Romina Russell’s action-packed new book Zodiac (available today from Razorbill), it is up to her - and the requisite gaggle of companions - to essentially save the entire universe. It’s a commonly reoccurring theme in young adult literature - a teenaged girl discovers she is somehow special and must embark on a harrowing journey to save the known world.

Romina russell books