*7/10 Stars*

Note to self: as part of my writing practice going forward, I want to review more books in a critical way, with an eye to what felt strong/weak and how the different elements affected my experience of the book as a whole.

Craft Review:
There was so much I liked about this story, and so much I loved about the writing. But in the end, I felt like the plot— both emotional/internal and external— was lacking. The start was really ambitious, but I think that the time skip really worked against it, and even made things confusing. It’s also feels true that the set up really made me expect more death and actual destruction; I’ve never read “The Count of Monte Cristo,” but I think a good revenge story can be difficult to pull off. This one felt like it was almost muted, somehow. Maybe that’s because punches were pulled? Like, other than at the beginning and the very end, and when it was revealed (after the fact) that Bas had lost his eyes, there wasn’t a lot of direct violence happening. And I think there was so much time actually spent on world building and plot that I didn’t get to know Cayo and Amaya very well, which it harder to care about them. I think Amaya’s multiple roles and identities are fascinating, but that made her characterization somewhat shallow as well. From a structural perspective, I think that telling the story after Amaya had already escaped the debtor’s ship, along with the rest of the bugs, weakened her emotional stakes as well. She’d already gone through a major change and developed a relationship with Boon, which readers were cheated of seeing in real time. And I already considered her safe, which meant that the whole elaborate orevenge plot felt almost nonsensical to me. And Cayo felt some what static too... I’m realizing now that maybe what was missing was a personal change. Roach says Amaya has changed, but it feels sort of false, to be honest. Her goal is still the same at the end of the story as at the moment she gets off the ship, even if her target has changed— revenge. She’s learned about her past and has feelings for this boy, but that doesn’t strike me as internal change either.

All that being said: as I read this, I could see the skill with which it was written. It’s not bad in any sense of the word, and I still enjoyed all of the pieces coming together. Like, other than the squashed beginning section, the pacing felt mostly good, and the writing was clear and graceful. There was a strong sense of place, good world building, and I really enjoyed the moments between Cayo and Amaya a lot. So I guess from the outside the book looks great, but there’s some heart missing, and to really flesh out all of the things that happened (past and present) in this novel would have made it much longer.