whatthedeuce's Reviews (1.39k)

I raced through the first third of the book so quickly, but when I picked it up again the next day, it lost momentum. I found myself wanting it to just be over already about halfway through. I never found Evie/Lucca or her relationship with Ryan compelling, and

once Devon entered the scene, it became absurd that he could legit solve any problem with his tech knowledge and hacking. It took the plausibility and realism outta the entire novel. I guessed either Ryan himself or George would be Mr. Smith. I wanted it to be Ryan so there wouldn’t be a cheesy ass ending where he and Evie/Lucca end up together. But alas they did.

The world building is intriguing, but it is taking way too long to get to the part where Vis even reaches the actual Academy. I really wanted to enjoy this because everyone has been raving about it, but I’ve barely been able to make it through 150 pages in three days and usually I’m a very fast and voracious reader. This was too much of a slog, unfortunately, and I was shocked by how small the font is considering the book is 620 pages. That makes it even more daunting and feel longer than it looks.

While it’s a very well-written book and the characters feel so real (at times frustratingly so), the book is entirely too long. I kinda feel like I read every single thought and feeling Julia ever experienced, and it got exhausting about halfway through the novel. I appreciated how realistically she was rendered and completely understood how her childhood experiences resulted in her blunt and often intractable personality, but she was so irritating and difficult to sympathize with a lot of the time. I’m not saying characters, especially female ones, have to always be likeable, but man, Julia and her mother were so hard to stomach.

This book is an exceptional piece of YA fiction. The world building and characterizations are outstanding and nuanced. The author delved into so many heavy topics, like colonialism, ableism, racism, and homophobia, in ways that felt organic rather than shoehorned and clunky. I liked that the author avoided spoon feeding us every new vocabulary word’s definition. I might not immediately understand what a word meant and instead had to see it used somewhere down the line in a very specific context to fully grasp its meaning. 

Another huge plus for this novel was its portrayal of an unflinchingly brave, bold, and curious female teen protagonist. Anequs speaks her mind with barely any hesitation both with her peers and with authority figures. Her genuine thoughtfulness toward Sander, Theod, and Liberty was so endearing. And even though she often ended up thinking Anglish customs and traditions were silly or overly complicated, she genuinely tried to learn about the mores, holidays, lifestyles, etc. of her peers. 

I loved

Theod getting to find his family and slowly coming into his identity as a nackie individual after having been denied access to his people/culture all his young life. It wasn’t like he was magically just as bold and outspoken as Anequs cuz realistically he’s spent his existence up til that point feeling isolated and guarded so that’s not gonna just change overnight.

It’s been quite awhile since I’ve anticipated a sequel this fervently, but I’m really looking forward to the next book and could totally see this as a TV series!