Book Review: Lakes of Mars

Alright everyone! I am finally reviewing the oldest book on my Netgalley TBR. This one has been there since 2018 and I finally read the book. It was called Lakes of Mars by Merritt Graves and this is what I thought.

Synopsis: Aaron Sheridan doesn’t want to live anymore. His entire family had just died in a shuttle crash and he’d been the one flying it. Unable to deal with the guilt, he signs up for the Fleet expecting a fatal deployment to the Rim War, but instead ends up at their most prestigious command school, Corinth Station.

Initially, he’s detached from the brutality of his instructors and the Machiavellian tactics of the other students there, but after he sticks up for his only friend he makes himself a target of the most feared cadet on the station, Caelus Erik. Unsure of whom to trust and worried that anything he does will make others on his flight team targets as well, Aaron retreats deeper and deeper inside himself. However, when he discovers that officer training is not the station’s only purpose, it becomes increasingly clear that risking everything is the safest thing he can do.

I was excited to finally get to this book and would say it had a cool premise. I’m a big fan of the training academy trope so I had a lot of fun following along with our main character Aaron as they navigated being thrown into a new space military academy and figuring out just how to survive.

The stakes were constantly high and you never knew what was going to happen. I mean this book was action packed. There were a lot of different characters introduced and I found that some of the time it was hard to keep track of who was who but with time, that got better.

I did find the romantic element to it to be a little unrealistic but I think its cool that they tried to have that element added in. It would have been better if it had more time to form a more believable relationship.

I also wasn’t a fan of the R word being dropped in a way that it was meant as a negative connotation. That always pulls me out of a book.

The way it ended leaves it up for more books to be made into this series and I would be willing to check out the rest as it was a fun ride (just stop using the R word like that please).

Book Rating: 3.5/5

You can buy this book on Amazon and find it on Goodreads.

Disclaimer: I was sent this book by NetGalley to read and give an honest review.