On Starships and Dragonwings

Cracked by Eliza Crewe is the first in the Soul Eater series and stars Meda, a slightly mad soul-eating monster. What a great MC right?? Meda has a delightfully deranged sense of humor and her sarcastic inner thoughts made a wonderful running commentary during Cracked. I absolutely love that Crewe was able to present such a broken and yet deeply relatable narrator  in Meda. Despite the fact that she is self-confessed evil and has to kill people to survive, I wish I could get to know her in person! Definitely when she is well-fed though >.>.

Note: I received an eARC of Cracked through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Some things may have changed in the final version.

Cracked by Eliza Crewe (Soul Eater #1)
Published by Strange Chemistry on Nov. 5th, 2013
Genres: Contemporary Fantasy, Dark Fantasy, YA 
Length: 336 pages
How I got my copy: NetGalley
IndieBound - Book Depository - Goodreads
Purchases made support this blog 

Meet Meda. She eats people.

Well, technically, she eats their soul. But she totally promises to only go for people who deserve it. She’s special. It’s not her fault she enjoys it. She can’t help being a bad guy. Besides, what else can she do? Her mother was killed and it’s not like there are any other “soul-eaters” around to show her how to be different. That is, until the three men in suits show up.

They can do what she can do. They’re like her. Meda might finally have a chance to figure out what she is. The problem? They kind of want to kill her. Before they get the chance Meda is rescued by crusaders, members of an elite group dedicated to wiping out Meda’s kind. This is her chance! Play along with the “good guys” and she’ll finally figure out what, exactly, her ‘kind’ is.

Be careful what you wish for. Playing capture the flag with her mortal enemies, babysitting a teenage boy with a hero complex, and trying to keep one step ahead of a too-clever girl are bad enough. But the Hunger is gaining on her.

The more she learns, the worse it gets. And when Meda uncovers a shocking secret about her mother, her past, and her destiny… she may finally give into it. 

Strengths:

• Meda! Oh Meda, how I love you. So often books are narrated by the chosen one who is going to save the world, but Cracked is narrated by the monster that the good guys are supposed to be hunting. The beginning of Cracked starts off pretty gruesome and gives us a clear idea of just how terrible Meda is, and I couldn’t help celebrating that finally I had come across a truly unique MC!
• Cracked still has romance, don’t you worry, but it’s between two of the secondary characters and it’s adorable! This was such a great way to bring in that warm fuzzy element without the main character needing to do a 180 to appease our thirst for teen romance.
• Meda is so freaking hilarious. She is snarky and sarcastic and since she is trying to hide that part of her personality throughout Cracked, we are privy to some really fun inside jokes that the other characters don’t get to enjoy. Especially in the beginning, I was freaking chuckling and laughing out loud from Meda’s snark.
• I’m not generally one for dark fantasy, but Cracked won me over and I can only describe it as deliciously dark. I actually found myself enjoying the darker elements because Meda convinced me to!
• I wasn’t really expecting many feels in Cracked because Meda is a monster after all, but wow was I wrong. The feels! Cracked surprised me by bringing tears to my ears through sad moments that break from the normal sad things you cry about. There was some of the normal causes of feels, but also some unexpected moments. So refreshing.
• I love it when epic battles have clever endings! When the characters do something that makes total sense in hindsight, but I definitely didn’t see coming, and instead of being magically awesome, they use their brains to save the day!
• Cracked has some really thoughtful and sweet sentiments, including a habit Meda develops of eating imaginary popcorn with a certain adorable side character. The final line of Cracked better not change because it was so beautiful and perfect.
• I haven’t read many books with Templar myths outside of the mystery genre, so it was fun to see contemporary fantasy pull on those!

Weaknesses:

•  Meda becomes a bit less humorous as Cracked continues. Perhaps I just got too used to her snark, or perhaps she is meant to be less snarky throughout, but I was sad that I wasn’t laughing as much by the end.
• Despite certain epic battle surprised, Cracked followed a fairly predictable storyline. I’m interested to see where the second book goes, but I certainly wasn’t wowed by any plot twists.

Summary:

Cracked was utterly delightful in a dark fantasy kind of way. If you like dark fantasy, you simply must read Cracked. It is by far my favorite thing from Strange Chemistry so far! I am just so in love with a very clearly evil character being the first-person narrator of a story, and Meda somehow managed to worm her way into my heart ;-).