The Evaporation of Sofi Snow (Sofi Snow, #1)

by Mary Weber

The line between virtual & reality is about to EVAPORATE.

In a world where skycams follow your every move and the details of your life are uploaded each hour, Sofi knows that her eyes are the only caring ones watching her brother, Shilo. As an online gamer, she works behind the scenes to protect Shilo as he competes in a mix of real and virtual blood sport. But when a bomb destroys the gaming arena, she is helpless to rescue him-and certain that his disappearance was no accident. Despite all the evidence of Shilo's death, Sofi 's nightmares tell her he is still alive. Could the dreams be truer than what everyone else claims?

For Miguel-a charming young playboy from Earth-the games are of a different sort. As Ambassador to the Delonese, his career has been built on trading secrets. In the aftermath of the bombing, he fears he has lost Sofi forever, even as he wonders if she is really who she seems. Now he's a target for blackmail. The game is simple: help the blackmailers or lose more than anyone can fathom-or than Earth can afford.

Step into a universe of diverse characters, alien invasions, and high-stakes video gaming. Because when technology reigns, nothing is as true as it seems-and fantasy can become reality after all.

• ISBN10: 0718080912
• ISBN13: 9780718080914
• Publish Date: 6 June 2017
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Inc
• Imprint: HarperPerennial
• Format: eBook
• Pages: 352
• Language: English

Reviews

[readingwithwrin]

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for an e-arc in exchange of my honest review.

I had no idea what to expect when starting this book, and it completely amazed me.

Sofi and her younger brother Shilo are in a game that is very futuristic and complicated for me to explain because I'm not sure I fully understand it. I will say that I found it absolutely fascinating with how the politics of this world and the game were mixed together. Sofi's mom is a leader of a big corporation in this world, and it appears that she chooses the company over her own children.

This world also has aliens of some sort, they are very different from humans on earth and are scary in a way to the humans.

We also see things from Miguel's point of view and he is an ambassador to this alien nation from earth. Miguel is a really complicated character, and we didn't really get to learn a lot about him as a person outside of who he was to Sofi.

Sofi and Miguel have a very complicated relationship/friendship. I'm still not exactly sure what happened between them, but it's now very complicated.

Overall I loved this story. Sofi and Miguel and this whole world really is fascinating to me, and I can't wait to see what happens next. If you can I would say to at least look at a physical copy of this book as each chapter has a faded out background pattern to it, that gives a little hint to something that they figure out in the books.

The side characters were all fascinating to me, and I really wasn't expecting for certain things to happen and I was just as shocked as the characters. The AI in this book is amazing as well and I really liked how she was helpful and not made to seem 'evil' in any way and instead was just an assistant of sorts to Miguel.

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[sa090]

Do you know the feeling when you order a very specific pizza with very specific toppings but the order gets messed up and you get a pizza with the things you wanted and all the things you didn't and then you spend your meal between eating and taking out the things you didn't like? Which in the end results in an okay experience that could've been so much more? That right there is the Evaporation of Sofi Snow for me.

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For me personally the game wasn't hard to understand and visualize, it sounded like a mix of World Trigger, the film Gamer and a little bit of Ready Player One so after a couple of chapters or so I was totally on board with the idea and actually looking forward to more of it. Sadly the book moves away from that interesting aspect and focuses on something different while retaining some bits and pieces of what made FanFight an interesting event. The thing that was slightly meh about it, was the lack of a real reason for this game. They provide more than one reason for sure but since all of them can seemingly coexist with each other without changing my impression of any of them make me want a little more specification.

Now the second part of the book or rather what we moved to was interesting in its own right as well. It wasn't that difficult to figure out why this is a thing for me but as usual not-so-original ideas =/= boring ideas so I was fine with it. I really enjoyed learning about Delon, the Delonese, thinking about their possible agenda, seeing their habits and learning of their influence. This part also had an aspect I really enjoyed in the book; Sofi's devotion to save her brother. Bonds like these mean a lot to me and the way Mary Weber portrayed it was enjoyable to read about, especially with the added "thing" that seemingly promises many interesting stuff. These two things are the pros of the book for me, the cons unfortunately outweighs them.

The main main issue I had with the book was the dialogue, the way Mary Weber wrote this with the new words and the exchanging of some terms made the book hard to get through and the more I read sometimes the less interested I got. However, I can learn to ignore this, what I couldn't ignore is the usage of Spanish in a lot of chapters. Some words are very similar to English so it would've been fine if it was just that but since I don't know a lick of concrete Spanish (English was the only foreign language taught at school) some words had me looking up a translation because I didn't want to risk losing the context of their thoughts and the frequency was annoying. If I take Flame in the Mist as a parallel because of the Japanese terms used in it then that right there is the difference, in Flame of the Mist the foreign words are there because it IS what the things are called in Japan (you won't find Mariko calling her mother Haha/Okasan for example) with an added glossary to help if needed. Here, it's just unnecessary.

The characters are next, I found it really hard to actually care about any of them. Sofi's jumbled emotions and what that implied to me about her self worth (this is just me since I can be very prideful with stuff like this) kills every ounce of respect I build for her when we're following her journey to find her brother, her "partner for 3 years" was way too obvious thanks to the replies after the bomb, Miguel is one of those characters where the author tried way too hard to convince me that he's cool/bad boy/irresistible that he just comes out as really lame and also sadly laughable of an attempt when the hair is mentioned (he does an amazing thing, I won't deny that but it doesn't change much of my impression of him so late in the book). The other characters in the book went from unnecessary (like the book wouldn't have changed at all if they weren't there, C for example) and names on a page.

The world building was another lacking aspect of the book, was it there in any way? Yes, it's there enough to give a very general idea of the world but it wasn't nearly enough. This world is huge, very advanced, with new whole systems and a whole new race so I really wanted to know a lot more about it than some very passing explanations. Why children are made into ambassadors for seemingly no real reason? is one of my bigger questions.

This really sucks because the premise is really interesting and the events in the book, despite not going how I hoped it would, shows a lot of things that ended up interesting me either way but these small and seemingly irrelevant things had me stuck in the "I want to read and I don't want to read" area for a long time. Would I read the sequel? Most likely since it's a duology so it's not that long of a commitment and based on the title it's most likely dealing with the things I liked in the book so yeah... 🙃

Final rating: 2/5

[violetpeanut]

I don't know...I'm a little torn about this one. I liked the general plot and the underlying themes, but I had some issues. First, the pacing was a little off for me. There were parts that were very exciting and kept me reading after I should have put the book down, and then there were sections that were very slow and I had to push myself to get through them. There were also a lot of little things that didn't make sense. Why would a teenager be an ambassador to an alien race? What is the purpose for the games? Why does no one think it strange that a planet can just park itself somewhere new? How did these corporations take charge and why these corporations? Sooo many questions. I also found the explanations of the hacking and computer tech to be a little confusing. I don't know if this is a standalone or the first in a series but honestly, it doesn't even matter because I wouldn't continue the series, anyway.