Ratings371
Average rating4
I initially went into this book not expecting too much. (Side note: I really hated the quote on the front because it was so blatantly oversimplified that it set my expectations for this book way off.) Gothic horror and necromancy always seemed cheesy to me and putting it in space? Eh.
But I enjoyed this book immensely. The main character was a ton of fun to read as she was the right mix of impulsive, intelligent, and entertaining to make it worth the binge. The book suffered from too big of a cast at first so it was super overwhelming to keep track of names. But over time the other characters became very distinctive and enjoyable as well. I could picture all the side characters really clearly after a bit and I surprisingly was able to tell them apart just by name for once.
A lot of that was due to how well Tamsyn Muir used her exposition and description. While there was a lot more than other books, the descriptions set the scene really well and made some of the gothic nature of the setting stick out to me. There was one scene around halfway through the book that kept me up at night because of how well it was set up and how spooky it was.
The general plot was gripping though it was never super clear about the overall purpose of the whole story. It was passed over in a few sentences and each character seemed to understand the goal implicitly but it wasn't satisfying to me as a reader. I assume the whole background story and the lore is expanded on in the next books so I was happy to just read knowing that this story was pretty insulated from the rest of the world.
Overall this book was another solid 4 stars (third this week!) and I am going to start binging the second book :)