Untethered Sky

I adore The Greenbone Saga, so the minute this was announced, I was all in, no questions asked. Then I saw the price. And I found out I was all in, with at least one question asked. I'm going to preface this review with the disclaimer that this is not worth the hardback cost, unless you are a die hard Fonda Lee fan. This book is good, but it's not “full novel price” good.

Untethered Sky is a book that is entirely focused on the training of Rocs, giant birds of prey that their trainers, known as Ruhkers, use to hunt Manticores, beasts that prey on humans. And it does this really well. If you want to see someone train a really cool animal companion, and be very good at it, this is the book for you.

However, there are a good few issues with this book, that knock it down a little bit for me.
For one, the worldbuilding is almost nonexistent. You get told the aforementioned bit about Rocs and Manticores, and learn some minor details about the empire it takes place in. But for the most part, the book is entirely focused on the training of the Rocs, and hunting Manticores. In my opinion, this is a massive misssed opportunity, as the glimpses that we see of the world make it seem like a really vibrant culture. I hope that down the line, Fonda decides to make this into a larger scale series so that we get to properly experience what's on offer.

Something else it does very well, is characters. For anyone that read Greenbone, this is not gonna be shocking. Fonda has the ability to craft characters that you fall in love with within pages, so it's almost a guarantee that you'll click with someone in her cast. This is no exception, with the two main characters being excellent.

The big difference between this and Greenbone in my opnion, is perspective. This book is told in First-person, in the style of a memoir, which fits really well in my opinion. It allowed me to get into the character's head perfectly, which I appreciated.

The story itself is ok, I guess. I'm not in love with it, but I don't dislike it either. It serves it purpose perfectly, but isn't all that rich, and I wasn't really all that invested in the minutiae of it.
I liked the structure of the book, with it just being 4 long chapters, each one denoting a specific part of the main character's growth as a trainer. It allowed for timeskips where necessary, without it feeling jarring like they can in other books. This is also helped by the PoV being a first person memoir too.

Overall, though it lacked things that I look for in a lot of my books, I found myself very content with the book, albeit wanting more from the universe as a whole. A solid 4/5 if you get it digitally or in paperback. I still stand by the fact that Tor and Gollancz have massively overpriced this book, and I really hope that doesn't become the norm for novellas, since I think it will all but kill them long term