Peacebreakers by M. MacKay

MMckay-Mindy MacKayNever in my life have I ever refused to finish a book.  I normally try to give the writer and story a chance and at the very least have enough curiosity to want to see how the book ends.  Unfortunately, Peacebreakers by Mindy MacKay has changed that.  I tried, I really did, but I just couldn’t make myself read any further than Chapter 5; a mere 29 pages into the book.

Some wounds never heal, especially when brutal genocide is involved. Hunted to the brink of extinction in the nineteenth century, the mutants are a staggering society, but they fight on.

The time is now over a hundred years after the series of massacres that crippled mutantkind. The place is Montreal, Quebec. The rallying point is The Paralysis, a group of rebellious superhumans headed up by Isabella Sordeno, who has taken on and defeated even death in the name of mutant civil rights. The stage is set for revolution.

Enter Kiera Graves, hired killer extraordinaire. With her chaotic nature and insurrectionary spirit, she seems like the perfect catalyst to get Isabella’s uprising on its feet. But when she takes the struggle too far by destroying an overseas death camp, she inadvertently unleashes a virus that threatens to smother the globe, and as if it wasn’t bad enough that she managed to break the world, a local prophetess soon predicts that her lover is fated to die at her hands.

From what I read, Peacebreakers is about the war between humans and mutants, where the humans had decided to wage a war against the mutants in an attempt to make the species extinct.  This has even been dubbed The Purge and it is why, in the present day, many mutants are doing everything they can to kill, torture and mess with humans.  There is a group that leads this movement called The Paralysis, which was started by the late Isabella Sordeno and is now run by her brother Dustin.

The only main character I got to know was a girl named Kiera, who is a mutant.  She is headstrong, a drunk, and evil (the evil part is strictly my opinion).  She slaughters humans for her “cause”, not caring whether or not they have done anything to provoke her.  As far as I’m concerned, there is NOTHING redeemable about this character.  Maybe I just didn’t read far enough into Peacebreakers, but it was all I could do to read through the pages that focused on Kiera.  She came off as a hateful, b*tch (I don’t normally swear in my reviews, but I honestly couldn’t think of another word that fit her).

In the 2nd chapter, Kiera writes a note to herself and it came off as so immature that I cringed my entire way through it.  It was after reading this that I knew I was going to have a hard time making it through the book.  It just sounded like Peacebreakers was written by a teenager.  Imagine my surprise when I went to Amazon.com, read the reviews and found out that it actually was written by a 17 year old.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure that Mindy MacKay is far more talented at writing than I am, and kudos to her for getting published so young, but I really feel her writing needs to mature a bit before I’d be able to get through one of her books.

The plot of Peacebreakers is something I can’t tell you much about.  Honestly if you read the synopsis, you don’t know much more than I do about it.  However, I can tell you this…I found the transitions between chapters choppy and I found the part of the story I read hard to follow.  Hopefully, this got better as the book went on.

I’d like to say I was able to find something enjoyable about the 29 pages of Peacebreakers that I read, but I can’t.  My best advice is to not waste your money or your time and to hit up the library if you want to read Peacebreakers.

About Lisa 30 Articles

4 Comments

  1. Hm… sounds like X-men on crack.
    I always feel bad when I don’t finish a book, but yes sometimes it happens. I try to make it at least 50-100 pages in, so I know for sure that it’s not working out. And sometimes it actually gets better after that, so I think it’s worth the try :)

  2. Selina: I agree I normally push myself to get 50 pages into a book, which is why I’ve always finished them before (actually I lied, I just remembered I didnt finish Dune when I was in HS…LOL). Normally I can find something about every book that will keep me going. This time however, I just couldn’t do it. I honestly tried, but I found myself making every excuse to not read the book. I would love to find someone else who has read or attempted to read Peacebreakers, because I want to know if I’m the only one who feels this way. LOL It’s just so unlike me not to follow through when reading something…

  3. Aww, man, if you hated Kiera so much you shoulda kept reading because the book is essentially about fate punishing her for how completely and terribly horrible she is. I, for one, find a great deal of amusement in sick humor, so I enjoyed the whole ride, but if you just want to see a bitch get put into her place the ending would have satisfied you.

  4. Hi, Lisa.

    Just found this review while Googling myself. I understand that it wasn’t your cup of tea, and I’m sorry for any frights and jumps I might have given you along the way in the 29 pages you read. I’m a horror junkie through and through; always have been, and I guess it’s easy to forget that not everyone stomachs blood ‘n’ guts like I do.

    I won’t argue with any point in your review; we’re all entitled to our opinion and yours is valid. I’m just afraid that after the bumpy ride my book has been through, you might think I’m amoral and heartless as my characters, which is not the case. I write bad people, there’s no doubt of that. But I don’t sanction any of their actions. I like to think that I give them their just desserts(I dealt Kiera quite the tragedy and she knows she deserves it). I’m sure there are those who disagree with me and think every one of my characters deserves much worse, but regardless of how good or bad a master of my puppets I am, I’m not a fiend! >.< I couldn't hurt a worm.

    Well, okay, maybe a worm. But I'd never harm a hair on the head of, say, a mouse, or any creature with equal or greater complexity.

    Hehe. Just wanted to clear that up.

    Thanks again and ciao!

    <3 Mindy.

Comments are closed.