mayastef's reviews
175 reviews

I read this book in one sitting and loved it. Really rekindled my desire to read, which was much needed. I loved the characters in this book and really felt like everyone stuck to their guns character development-wise and also story arc-wise. Sometimes authors seemingly switch up personalities halfway through a book and it pisses me off. Very much not the case here. I liked unravelling the mystery along with the main characters and can see where some people might say they 'called it' or it was predictable but I still enjoyed it so who cares. 

Rebecca Ross I love you so much but I had to haul myself through finishing this book. Mostly a product of my personal life but it makes it challenging to enjoy a book when you don't feel inclined to pick up the book. Any beef I had with this book was my own fault. I think I wasn't ready for the whole divine war thing when I started reading these books, that's my fault I like going into books blind.

Well, only time will tell if this book prepared me for my upcoming dives.

In my spirit, this book is 5 stars, in my logical brain it's not perfect. Love the concept and love the author, there's a few assorted things that I think could've bumped this to 5 stars. I understand this is a YA book but I do think it could've benefitted from the characters being like 22-25 instead of 18-19. Rebecca Ross writes tension between rivals/enemies/etc so well I love it dearly. I think at times the pace was a hair too quick, somehow the story was moving just a bit too fast and not giving me all the information I wanted out of it. I think more mythology sprinkled in would've been nice considering a divine war is the large driving conflict in this story. 

This book starts as just a fun romp with a somewhat nonsensical time travel experiment and slowly evolves to a much darker and more reflective tone. This shift was unexpected but not necessarily unwelcome. I struggled with the writing style at times but those struggles were easy to push through and did not take much enjoyment away from my experience. As with any time travel story it never quite makes 100% sense, I do wish the technicalities of the time travel were explored a bit more. I think further explanation and emphasis on this would only aid in creating the sense of importance/urgency that was building up in the last third of the book. I wanted more fun romp and less exploration of the flaws in our society. The flaws were explored quite well, I just didn't know that's what I was getting into. 

Much too long and slow paced for me at this current moment in my life. I also realized I wasn’t really connecting with the characters and was more engaged with the plot in the flashback chapters than the actual overall book plot.

This book is probably the worst book I have finished since the conception of my spreadsheet. I dont even know where to begin. 

I don't even like this book enough to give it away, the one-star review is genuinely a kindness that this book does not deserve. I wish I had DNFed this book, I don't even know where to begin. I think the origins of my issues with this book is that I purchased it as a blind date with a book at my favorite bookstore. How could my favorite bookstore forsake me like this, even if this book is to someones taste who bought it blindly I still think it was incredibly irresponsible to sell this book wrapped up with only the tag line "raw dark magic underneath these streets". I occasionally dabble in horror/thriller so getting a book from these genres as a blind buy isn't a problem its the sheer brutality depicted in this book. I understand my reading circumstances are unique but that doesn't mean I don't have further criticisms of the actual writing not just my specific experience. 

Usually when I have specific gripes with a book I outline how they could have been improved upon or fixed from my point of view, but upon thinking about the ways I’d improve this book the only logical course of action I could conclude was just “scrap it and try again”

The conflict/apparent driving factor of the plot is not clarified until about 60% of the way through the book. This is just a bunch of words bound into 224 pages of nothingness all together. Sure horror and thriller are supposed to often be uncomfortable but I was uncomfortable for all the wrong reasons. If you have to resort to gory, gruesome, and brutal depictions of hate crimes to elicit a response from the reader, simply get better at your job or pick another career this is a skill issue. Nothing about this book was thrilling. I was never at the edge of my seat anxious to see what is going to happen next. None of the characters feel all the way fleshed out, no one seems to have a true purpose. The magic makes no sense at all, I have such specific issues about magic/fantasy elements in stories not being rooted in any other part of the story. Why is there a weird little fairy wraith following Ghost all the time? But no one else can see it? Where did it come from? Why is he so accepting of it in this otherwise normal non-magic society? We have some weird sorcerer vibes but there is no explanation of why or how he has powers? Is he alone in having magic? There are too many questions that go unanswered about basic foundational plot points. 

I did not like the writing style of this book, it was not objectively bad it was just not to my taste. I do understand that six-year-olds being so grown up because they are basically bred to be soldiers is a very large part of the plot (arguably the entire plot) but I don't think the author does a good job of reminding the reader that these are children. He does it but I think the reminders often make the writing choppy and showing some small weaknesses amongst these children to highlight how young they are would further aid the reader in connecting with them and the overall themes of the book. Very classic sci-fi story to me, it made sense but I think I have read similar books that were potentially partially inspired by this one that I connected with much more. I also am currently trying to escape thinking about politics so this was maybe not my best pick.

I enjoyed this book, but for the sake of not giving any hints about a mystery book in my review, sadly, we are only gonna talk about the things I didn't like in this book.
These characters are for the most part bad people and you really aren't sure who to trust at different times which makes the mystery element powerful. That being said, I think the pacing of the mystery unraveling was off at times. More often than not it was too slow, we see the character have some sort of revelation but in my opinion it takes too long for the reader to get the information that allows the reader to follow the thought process of the character. My other gripe is that the island's magic didn't always make sense like the omens and patterns did not click for me. 

I did not enjoy the jump at the end from gun to head going to die straight to happy with kids in the city. Could've used another chapter there, I want to know what the fallout on the island looked like. Genuinely felt like pages of the book were missing

If Ashley Poston has zero fans I am dead.