Emi Baldock
Forcing myself to read this book gave me hives.
This book is hot garbage. Rebecca Yarris spends the whole book gaslighting you within single sentences, treating her readers like they are morons, repeating words (rucksack, parapet, using “stone” over and over and the only descriptor of the school etc.) over and over, or repeating almost exact sections of diaogue between the SAME two characters on the same very page. Her ability to commit to scale is non existent and constantly changing, for example violet upon first seeing dragons is described as being the size of one of their teeth but this is contested with every other reference to size and dragons that happens later. Now onto the world building- I'd love to tell you literally anything about it but that would require sensible sentence structures and comprehensive description. Instead we get MC reciting lists of lore as an anxiety coping mechanism for about 3 chapters, and then vague non sensical references to the world in the most confusing and unrelated ways. Ordinarily I wouldn't let this bother me except that the MC has allegedly trained their entire life to be a scribe, are supposed to be incredibly smart, and the book is in first person so their really is no excuse for that to be a deficiency other than it to be with Yarris's writing.
The plot for this book was fantastic. I really enjoyed the core moments and reveals and it (selfishly) upsets me that I will never get to experience this plot as an adult fantasy because I loved it so much and YA is just not my favourite genre.
It does however make me very excited to see what else Namina Forna will come out with. Once the writing style develops and Namina trusts their audience a little more to draw their own conclusions rather than spelling out every thought and discovery (often quite a while after it becomes very obvious to the reader) I think we will see some truly fantastic work being produced. I can't wait to watch Namina's journey and I'll definitely be continuing with this series.
