“This is a madhouse!”
“The world’s a madhouse. This is a place to heal it.”

Stars (Out of 10): 10/10 Stars

Favorite Character: I can honestly say that I felt for them all.

Spoiler Free: Some novels need 500 pages to make you like the cast of characters. Give Maggie Stiefvater 18, and you’ll be ready to put your life on the line for them. The way Maggie chose to use POV and focalization, when combined with the amazing metaphors used constantly, made the characters feel real and three dimensional from the start. For a tale as character-based as this one, this fact was integral to my enjoyment of it.

This is not an action novel, not a thriller. This is not the book that will keep you up until the late hours of the night, gripping pages and sweating bullets. You won’t zoom through each word and sentence and phrase as if you can’t get enough, as if you are racing to the end. This book is a slow one, and I have to say I loved it for it. The changes, the miracles, are not ones that should be expected to happen in an hour, a day, even a month. So yes this book was slow, with language that was meant to make you slow down rather than speed up. Yes this book, of 320 pages, took me more time to get through than books with much higher page count. But it fits the story, fits the meaning this book is trying to push. It forces you to stop and think about what you read, about the meaning Maggie is trying to get across. (And if you just can’t handle slow books, no matter how meaningful, than unfortunately I don’t believe this book is for you.)

I also have to admit that this is the book that made me fall in love with Maggie’s writing style. I’ve read/tried to read many of her books so far, and while they’ve always hooked me plot/character wise, the pace was often off putting. But taking my time with this one made me see all the hidden gems Maggie sticks into her writing. From lengthy metaphors that somehow explain perfectly what the story is trying to get across, to short lines here and there that make you stop and think, it shows how much attention to detail Maggie pays, and I cannot wait to read more of her books now.

One last thing that I loved about the book (at least, spoiler-free thing), was its level of immersion. When I was reading this book, nothing else existed. I was in Bicho Raro, seeing these people, experiencing all the emotions. Even inside the novel, mentions of other places on Earth were jarring, because while reading, it felt like Bicho Raro was all that there was, all that needed to be. The level of culture, lore, and backstory that this stand-alone had was something all stand-alones should strive for. The lacking part of most fantasy stand-alones did not exist here (which I consider to be lack of immersion, since there are less pages to develop an entire world in.)

I didn’t know what to expect from this book, and I’m still uncertain of how exactly it affected me, how it changed me. All I know is that it did.

“I was looking for a miracle, but I got a story instead, and sometimes those are the same thing.”

Careful! Spoilers beyond this point!

Spoilers: I have to say that my favorite thing about this book (Okay, that’s a lie. I loved a lot of things about this book) was that there was no big bad guy, no evil villain of villains. In a book about finding yourself, and fighting the darkness we often keep within, the lack of a character that can be painted as the villain, the reason why everything is wrong, was important. It goes to show that, often, we are our own worst enemy, by holding on to poisonous untruths or our fear of change.

I also absolutely loved all the animal imagery/symbolism, as their extreme/quick movements often woke up the books in the more action-based, intense portions. I also just really like the owls, even if I can now only picture one with a human face (and that kinda creeps me out.)

Also, can we talk about the amazing world-building/story-building done for this standalone? It seriously tops that of most other stand-alones, and even some series! I never had to question why something happened the way it did, or why this rule or that one existed, because there was always a story or reason behind everything. Additionally, the amount of attachment Maggie was able to create to even the smallest of side-characters was amazing, as the few paragraphs dedicated to each of them were just so well-written!

And while yes, some people may say that with all this talk of disaster that the ending was a tad too happy, I like the fact that this book may bring hope to people looking for their own miracles, as I know it did to me.