I was pleasantly surprised when I read Stitching Snow, and this book was just as satisfying. I really enjoyed it.

Things I liked:

1. There are a lot of fairy tale re-tellings out there. A LOT. But I’ve never read one based off of the Wild Swans by Hans Christian Anderson. To be honest, I wasn’t actually familiar with the source material before picking this book up. I wish we had more re-tellings of lesser-known tales, because this was wonderful.

2. I liked Liddi quite a bit. It was obvious she was intelligent, even as she felt inadequate when compared to her brothers. I love how she uses her smarts to achieve her goals.
The other characters were interesting too, even though they weren’t as fleshed out as Liddi. I liked Tiav and his attempts to help Liddi learn to communicate and save her brothers.

3. Plot. This was fairly strong, although there are a lot of ideas in this story. The author is able to craft them into a cohesive narrative.

4. World. I felt like the author did a decent job at creating two very different worlds/cultures with Sampati and Ferrine. I also liked that there were a few other cultures that were explored. I would’ve liked to know a bit more about all of the alien cultures on Ferrine.

Things I didn’t like:

1. I understand why she felt like she couldn’t let Tiav in on what was really going on, this did have a bit of that whole unnecessary miscommunication trope. I made the book slow down a bit in the middle when I wish she would’ve just told Tiav what was happening.

I really like these fairy tales retold as sci-fi stories. And I love the covers to both this book and Stitching Snow. I will definitely look for more by this author.