I remember commenting, in the review I left of it, that the first book in the series was fucking depressing, but Noughts & Crosses is a total ray of sunshine compared to this. It is absolutely, unrelentingly bleak, and I think that's why I didn't enjoy it as much as I did the first book. That's saying something, considering how that book ended!

Blackman is an excellent writer, and this series is so well constructed, and so thoughtful, but "depressing" and "unrelenting" are perfect descriptors for it, and while I will certainly finish off the series, the horror of the first book has here become traumatic drudgery - not for me the reader, but certainly for the characters. And I realise that wanting to turn away from the sheer prejudicial misery of a piece of literature is completely indulgent given the subject matter, and those readers who cannot turn away because they experience a lot of what Blackman is describing in their own lives, but still. As tragic as the love story of Noughts & Crosses was, there actually was a love story in there somewhere, and that allowed at least some light in. That doesn't happen here... and it's a choice that culminates, again, in a shocking ending. But this time around that shock doesn't affect me at all, because while in Noughts & Crosses that utterly painful ending felt so inevitable within the narrative, here it just feels blatantly manipulative.