The Evaporation of Sofi Snow by Mary Weber

The Evaporation of Sofi Snow by Mary Weber
Narrator: Sarah Zimmerman
Published by Thomas Nelson on Dreamscape Audio
Published on 6 June 2017
Genres: Science Fiction
Format: Audiobook
Source: my local library
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RRP: $15.99

Ever since the Delonese ice-planet arrived eleven years ago, Sofi's dreams have been vivid. Alien. In a system where Earth's corporations rule in place of governments and the humanoid race orbiting the moon are allies, her only constant has been her younger brother, Shilo. As an online gamer, Sofi battles behind the scenes of Earth's Fantasy Fighting arena where Shilo is forced to compete in a mix of real and virtual blood sport. But when a bomb takes out a quarter of the arena, Sofi's the only one who believes Shilo survived. She has dreams of him. And she's convinced he's been taken to the ice-planet. Except no one but ambassadors are allowed there. For Miguel - Earth's charming young playboy - the games are of a different sort. As Ambassador to the Delonese, his career has been built on seduction and trading secrets. But now the tables have turned, and he's a target for blackmail. The game is simple: help the blackmailers, or lose more than Earth can afford.

So Mary Weber is a very hit-or-miss author for me.

• Storm Siren = Hit.
• Siren’s Fury = Miss.
• Siren’s Song = Hit.
• To Best The Boys = Hit.

Mary Weber is the only author in the history of my whole reading career (that’s 30+ years!) where I DNF’d a sequel then went on to read the third book in the trilogy!

The Evaporation of Sofi Snow? Miss.

But… I can’t tell you why.

I want to. I would love to tell you that the worldbuilding is shoddy or the character motivations make no sense, the dialogue is implausible, and that Sofi and Miguel are just really bad for each other.

But I can’t.

Because every time I tried to listen to this audiobook, my mind would drift, I’d lose concentration, I’d miss something that was probably important (like the actual bomb exploding which I missed while driving so I couldn’t rewind it!) and then the next sequence of events would make little to no sense… so I’d start to think about other things again, and then I’d realise I’d missed the audiobook and start paying attention again only to have to scrape together what was going on from various hints in the narration.

Now, I don’t want to say outright that this book was the cause of said mind-wandering and inability to focus, but… this book just didn’t do it for me.

From what I can tell, Sofi is basically Perfect but her mother, the insanely rich and powerful leader of a Corporation (replaced countries in this future) forces her and her underage brother into Hunger-Games style arena battles. At some point, someone plants a bomb that explodes during one of these fights, and Sofi witnesses the weirdly human aliens taking her brother away, so she vows to find him, even though her own mother has confirmed that she, too, was killed in the attack. And there is some kind of young ambassador that has a complicated history with Sofi who can get her to the planet where he was taken.

But don’t ask me details about character development or what happened for large chunks of the narrative, because I have no idea.

It’s probably unfair of me to rate this book so lowly but… I’ve never had such problems listening to an audiobook before, so I don’t think it’s me.

As a bonus, I’m pretty sure Sofi was a person of colour, as was Miguel.

Also, the ending of this book was very unsatisfying.

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