Book Review: The Diabolic

I'm so close to my 70th book of 2016, it's crazy and I'm so happy with my progress especially as my reading goal was only 30 books! I've read a range of genres this year from classics and adult fiction to YA, graphic novels, picture books and many more. YA or young adult fiction has become one of my favourite genres as they are usually fun, entertaining, easy and quick to get through and very assessable but they tend to have consistent tropes which I'm not a massive fan of but The Diabolic is something else...

I was very kindly sent *The Diabolic by S. J. Kincaid (£5, hardcover, sale) from the lovely people at Simon and Schuster UK. It's an amazing price for a hardcover so get it while you can! The book is categorised within the young adult and science fiction genres - while I'm used to the YA genre, I haven't read much science fiction at all! The hardcover edition is 416 pages and the cover is so striking.

The book follows Sidonia and her diabolic, Nemesis, as well as her family during a tumultuous time in which radical, scientific thinking is coming back in place of the current religion which is making the powers at be more than a little nervous and trigger happy. A diabolic is an individual who has superhuman like abilities such as hearing and strength and they can be bonded to another individual who they will protect for life. But when politics and obviously a love interest get in the way, who will Nemesis choose and will the world survive the purge, politics and love?

The writing style is very quick and easy to follow so I managed to finish the 416 pages in a couple of days which is one of the reasons I really like reading YA! The writing style makes a slightly complicated world with a variety of characters and politics/factions easier to understand. The book features a lot of science fiction and politics which I haven't read much of before and I loved the political side of the story.

I loved the relationship between Sidonia and Nemesis as well as the relationship between Nemesis and Tyrus (to be honest one of the main reasons I wanted to reach he end was to find out if a certain two characters would get together - I'm SO happy with the ending!). I found all of the characters to be vidid, the world feels familiar but something I haven't read about before and it read like a YA science fiction/romance TV series which I personally loved. There are some ancient Rome vibes as well as some similarities with Red Queen but they are two completely different books but I loved both! As in Red Queen there are a lot of twists and turns, some of which I thought would happen and others I didn't - it was a fantastic rollercoaster and I think if you like YA then you will adore this book! To me it was like a story from ancient roman times of love, friendship and especially death and betrayal but set in space! The only reason it lost one star was because I found it to be a bit angsty towards the end which was a little annoying and other times it was quite brutal but in a way that it was a little over the top, in my opinion. Overall rating: ★★★★☆, 4/5.

Have you read this book? What are your currently reading?