disclaimer: I don’t really give starred reviews. I hope my reviews provide enough information to let you know if a book is for you or not. Find me here: https://linktr.ee/bookishmillennial

Admittedly, this was not my favorite Kacen Callender book. However, that doesn't mean it's a *bad* book. It just wasn't particularly my jam. I thought it was intriguing - biracial (white dad freed her Afro-Caribbean mom and then married her) slave owner Sigourney who wants to take power of her island to seek vengeance for her grief. It's a clever arc of the oppressed becoming the oppressor, and I deeply appreciate a morally grey, messy main character. This story forces you to examine what colonisation does in the aftermath, how these systems of oppression take hold deep within you (it takes a *lot* of active, uncomfortable unlearning, you're not just a perfect accomplice/ally/activist because you posted your lil black square), and how you can also become complicit in the very system that is hurting you/others.

Sigourney may be Black and biracial, and absolutely cannot escape that in a colonized society, but there are other intersections of her identity (class, social status, owning property) that actively contribute to the slavery and vile conditions that her people are currently enduring. She contends with it sometimes, but mostly justifies it - this is what I mean by being morally grey. She's aware but also laser-focused on power too! Meanwhile, the kongelig (what the colonizers are called) are being murdered and all signs point to Sigourney.  

I take no issue with that premise, let me be clear. I appreciate a book where you're internally struggling as you watch the main character make questionable decisions based in even more questionable motives. Like, I didn't feel like there were any "heroes" in this book, which I appreciate from a story, forcing people out of the good versus bad binaries, and instead presenting you with deeply layered, nuanced, fallible humans. 

I mostly took issue with the audiobook narration and the writing felt so far from what I'm used to from Callender. The writing and dialogue felt repetitive, and that repetition only made me wonder, 'Couldn't this book have been about 100 pages shorter?' I understand it's the first in a duology, so it's supposed to set the world up for us, which I don't typically mind. However, it didn't add to my understanding of the world and the way magic worked, it just repeated a lot of the same sentiments, and told us a lot (character motivations especially) instead of showing us. I recognize Sigourney's kraft was being psychic, but this just resulted in info-dumping, which was repetitive and slowed down the pace. 

I will read the next book, but I hope it's a bit less full of unnecessary fluff that this book had. 

i cannot stand the main character and her perspective. Am I supposed to feel bad for her that she was born free and doesn't have to be a slave? Am I supposed to feel bad that she is complicit in the brutal acts against the islanders, her own people? Am I supposed to feel bad that she doesn't feel deserving of love and forces her own slave to be intimate with her? I HATE her. And she's consistently having a pity party about her life and I'm just so done. I'm not even going to make myself push through this.