Welcome Back, Booklovers! Some of you who have been following me for awhile probably remember me talking about this a year ago. I also interviewed Namina Forna for my author interview series last year. So I came into this book knowing it would deal with some trauma and with all the initial hype I had high expectations.
Writing wise it definitely reads different than most YA fantasies I've read before. It starts off strong with eerie details of a purity ceremony where protagonist Deka is discovered to cursed blood. Those who have cursed blood are put to death. During her ceremony monsters called deathshrieks also attack causing chaos and death. Believing she brought this plague upon them, she is sentenced to death. However despite how many times they kill Deka she doesn't stay dead. She is then finally given a choice to leave and fight for the emperor in an army of girls just like her.
I thought this book did a great job portraying the PTSD Deka is feeling from her trauma. There are a lot of violent and gory scenes in this book that are described with just the right amount of detail. I also felt the closeness of the girls and knowing Namina is an AKA and Spelman grad I could see where she used her personal experiences to shape the sisterhood between the girls.
The world in this was just not very fleshed out for me to fully be immersed. I really couldn't picture the setting well. In an epic fantasy I love the little details about the food and terrain and I feel like this had the page count to describe those things. The way ethnicities are coded in this world reminded me of other books I've read this past year. For much of the middle we saw the girls training with their male partners however I didn't find the training scenes descriptive enough. And we moved from event to event at a rapid pace but at the same time it felt like we were trudging along. The tell more than show style writing just didn't work for me.
I received an arc from Delacorte Press in exchange for an honest review.
Great review! I also feel like the little details like the food and clothing descriptions really make the world richer. And I need that in my books. I'll probably still support the good sis though :)
ReplyDeleteEnjoyed the review. Was excited when you said this wasn't written like a lot of YA (because I'd like to see more play with form and style in books for teens) then unexcited when you said it's a lot of telling. Planning to give it a read at some point.
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