This one’s hard for me to rate. While I loved the world building, Thomil, and the way the author wrote, I was never surprised by anything that happened despite going in blind.

I don’t need to be surprised to enjoy or love a book. The themes discussed were extremely relevant to today and a lot of the dialogue (like actual dialogue) around the subject matter was handled realistically.

Sciona, oh I love her and hate her. She’s a great example of how privilege and oppression are not just a scale of black and white, much like the ‘otherrealm’. She’s racist and bigoted while clinging to her religion as a shield, pretecting and deluding herself from doing wrong or evil. Obviously this changes over the course of the book, but she is never absolved completely and that’s so so important.

Controversial take on subplots:

I found Sciona and Thomil’s relationship to be fairly genuine. While I may have preferred it if  they had remained uninvolved (either just yearning or platonic), it is also human nature to search for something more especially in the face of evil and what feels like (or is) the end of the world.