Avians by Timothy Gwyn

Expected publication: August 1st 2017 by Five Rivers Publishing

Read Date: July 27th 2017

Star: 4/5

Avians is science-fiction with amazing world-building.

Blurb (in my words)-

Avians are Glider pilots who help in trade between mountains. They don’t ask about past. They recruit thieves, orphans, and runaways, any girl with small body.
Raisa, 14-yr-old, is a princess of Wing Dynasty- a powerful silk merchant family. Defiant by nature, she doesn’t want to marry at early age and hates to be used like asset. Avians are the only option to run away from unwanted marriage.
Mel, servant of Wing family, is blamed for Raisa’s run away is hurt by treatment also joins Avians with other two new recruit.
These four new recruits are named ‘Blackbirds squad’. Difficult training and flying and internal dispute of Mel and Raisa makes this squad weak. One accident after their training scatter this squad.

My view:

 
One. Two. Three. Avians are ready to fly.
I have to rewrite this review a lot, I was not sure how much to say about the book and finally settled with this and tried my best without including spoilers. Two thing were the heart of the story. The trade business that connects everything and characters and loved this two things of the book. I have little elaborated the world here, just to make it easy to understand the book for reader. I hope I’m not giving away much.
My favorite lines from the book:
“I want to be an Angel more than ever. I want to be me, not the descendant of someone.”
World-building– Basically, People were living on green, very hot, and more oxygenated Celadon planet, looked like migrated from earth (why new planet and what happened to Earth! I don’t know! Time period was not mentioned in the book). There were two kind of people: One, Naturals – normal city humans, like us, and Avians- gliders who soloed first 35% of the book. Second, Coverts – kind of super humans- they live longer almost forever, plagued, and very secretive. They have reasons for being secretive which was explained in last few chapters. They live on airships that travels with Goods and receive and deliver it on various mountain range across the planet. Apparently there were 3 sister ships- Sitka, Sequoia, and Douglas. These people come in picture after Anians were done with their solo i.e. after 35% of the book, they made the book even more interesting. There is this third too –Spacer, who live outside the ring but nothing much mentioned about them in the book.
Honestly, it was hard to understand for me this whole thing. It was not like explained all in one chapter. As I progressed the book, I could join the pieces. I liked this dystopian world and it was amazing! Phewww, this world gave me quite a brain work.
Characters– Story was narrated by Mel, Raisa and Corby’s point of view- main 3 characters of the book. There are many diverse characters with different abilities in the book but it focuses on these 3 more.
Corby Corvid– Chief of Avians – who was strict, keeping everyone on their toe, but always doubting her position and her ways of leading Avians. She is my favorite character of the book. Mel– former servant later Blackbird- was acidic in nature but turns out a good squad leader. Raisa– hungry for freedom but not for food, I loved her defiant nature.  These 3 were very interesting to read in the book and was all the charm of the book and their development was brilliant.
What I liked? Needless to say, world-building and characters. I loved this female oriented glider concept of the book. Motto of Avians was amazing- ‘Small, Smart and Strong’, I loved Avians. The best was the training part of Blackbirds and how blackbird chose their names that was fun to read. Whole detailed instructions of flying gliders and trade business was so nicely written, I could understand the flying terminologies, though I don’t know anything about it, and I could imagine flying glider myself.
Corby was very fierce, strong and strict with them all. I loved the way she motivated everyone and treated them equally and her constant efforts to save more life. The way she dealt with troublemakers or the rule-breakers and the punishments she gave to them was brilliant. She always knew how to turn the weakness of any squad into strength that benefited everyone. I admired her for this ability. I even liked the family drama in the book. I enjoyed that part and learning about the Wing dynasty. I was so amazed how all characters faced the difficulties and how cleverly they solved the problems.
Second half, The adventure of Corby to Little Etna was mesmerizing! Why she didn’t come to action before! The volcano eruption part was so brilliant that I was tempted to give it full star. And major second half was ‘Sitka life’- I disliked Sitka people (converts). Agghh! They were so mean. Okay! I understood why they were so persuasive to convert one of the character but, that’s not a right way and I just hated how they tested her all the time. :/ I  agree with Corby’s  thought about them. However, they made book dramatic and interesting specially the story of former squad member. It also helped in understanding world-building little more.

End– I am so happy with the end. In this last part, I was buried under happy tears.

Why 4? Only one thing I didn’t understand how and why people came to live on Celadon / in which time period these all happened / how they were plagued and had to be separated / why only converts use metal why can’t they share it with naturals (mean people! :/ )? A little clarity of these things would have make the book easier to follow. In short I need more answers. Book is already big, 400 something, 100/150 pages more explaining things would be fine with me.
Overall, this was steady paced science fiction book and kind of all descriptive reading with the story. Great, definitely not boring. I enjoyed reading it.

Author: Timothy Gwyn

Know more about Author click⇒ HERE:

Publisher: Five Rivers Publishing

*** Note: I received a review copy of this book via LibraryThing, in exchange for an honest review. Many thanks to publisher and author. I am glad I got a chance to read this book. ***

What do you think about the book and my review? share your thoughts in the comment-box below.
Happy Reading! 🙂

BT&R