Alia Tero: The Many Lives of Darren Datita
by Lull Mengesha and Scott Spotson

get it here

BOOK SUMMARY 

Alia Tero, a planet cloned from Earth, presents both opportunity and despair for a bewildered young man named Darren Datita, who must deal with its strange rules, evolved from over hundreds of years of experimental society-building designed to enrich everyone. Everyone on Alia Tero must rotate every four months: this means leaving behind current jobs, roommates, lovers, and city of residence, to take on a fresh new life. While readers laugh at the pitfalls as Darren fumbles one new situation after the other, an undercurrent of restlessness—over just who runs Alia Tero—surfaces at unexpected moments.

BOOK REVIEW
3 STARS

*A free e-ARC was given through BookSirens. This is a voluntary review.* 

Alia Tero: The Many Lives of Darren Datita is a fast-paced story that follows Darren. In Alia Tero, everyone goes through a rotation every four months where they are relocated to a new country with a new job, new home, new roommate and unable to be in contact with others from past rotations. All based on the ‘point’ system where the more points you receive, the better job you get and vice versa. From a young age, Darren wasn’t like the rest of the people around him, instead, he constantly questions the rule of the society in Alia Tero and wonders if there’s a way to revolutionize and put an end to it.

The world of Alia Tero was thought-out quite well. The rotations made it seem as if it was absolutely impossible to get together to conspire against the leaders, the school curriculum discouraged thinking out of the box and everyone did as they were told. Despite that, there were some who tried their best to do so.

I enjoyed the story when it first started, however, it became rather boring in the next few chapters. I couldn’t get myself to like the protagonist or even have any feelings for him other than secondhand embarrassment. It was difficult for me to motivate myself to read it but I managed to push on because of the short chapters. Still, there were a few things that didn’t sit well with me. It was extremely fast-paced, to a point where some events happened just for the sake of information and understanding, making it a bit sloppy in my opinion.

Overall, it’s a light read that I definitely needed so I enjoyed that quite a lot.