I would like to thank Netgalley for providing me with an early copy of this book in exchange for an honest review in return.

I'm just going to jump straight into this, I enjoyed this book, is it my favorite Sci-fi book out there no, but it was enjoyable and worked great for the short length. Scifi is a genre that I will admit I am still very new to, so at times there are moments when I don't particularly feel like I know what its going on. The first chapter of this book was honestly very confusing to me. I had to re-read parts a few times and I'm not entirely sure if it was an editing thing or just my mind not grasping what was being told. Once I got out of chapter 1 everything started to make sense, so don't be turned away if you run into the same feeling.

We are thrown into this post apocalyptic world, where the rich live in space and have everything they could ever desire and the poor are left back on Earth where its basically a giant dried up wasteland. And of course its the poor who make sure the rich keep getting to live their comfy lives up there in space, in hopes of one day getting to join them. Its a common theme for storytelling but I did enjoy it none the less.

In the initial meeting of the Firewalkers we are told they are a group of young adults, late teens who walk the burnt, dried up Earth when problems arise in their townships. Now when I initially read the ages of the characters I did my usual eye roll, because you know 19 year olds saving the day is just..... so realistic haha. But the thing that I liked that Tchaikovsky did with this, was he provided an excellent and thought out reason as to why a bunch of 19 year olds are the best choice for being Firewalkers. After it was explained I sat back and genuinely thought about the approach and agreed with the logic behind it.

The pacing of the storytelling, was wishy washy for me, some moments it was super interesting, others felt like I was trudging through mud, and others left me just confused (but that one is more of a personal issue with being new to sci-fi terminology so don't hold to much to that please)

The characters where alright, none of them really stood out to me, I didn't feel any strong connection to them, they were decently built and easy to follow along with, and I'm sure someone out there will enjoy their character types. Although at times the conversations they had felt hard to follow and understand because of the approach to the language that was taken. The story is obviously years in the future and language changes over time and I felt like I couldn't get a grasp on some of the terms or phrases that they used that were suppose to be considered normal for them.

The plot itself was entertaining once the story moved from the township to actually following the firewalkers out in the open. For me the storytelling really picked up about chapter 4 and beyond. The last half of the book, was exciting in terms of action but then the very tail end of the story just seemed to drop the momentum, the twists were good in my mind, maybe to the more experienced sci-fi reader it might be an obvious approach but for me it felt twisty and unexpected.

Overall, I really did enjoy the idea and it was executed well, For the most part I believe its an easy to follow plot, with decent likable characters, and good world building, with well executed ideals. A quick fun read for something to pass the time.