What an intriguing concept! I saw the description (and cover) for this darkly fanciful tale and was immediately curious – and the book delivered as promised…
The story is original and the characters are too – original and human and relatable, which is saying something given the construct of the story. There are some truly thought-provoking quotes and moments; the idea of universal balance presented here is a novel way to approach the ideas of good and evil and makes for some surprisingly unnerving moments. The author is original in descriptions and adept with language (“The American had evil eyes and teeth”) and works a lot of simple yet profound truths into the narrative without seeming to proselytize or nag (“It’s a strange thing, realizing there’s a second story to each book”; “Just because I’m not a saint doesn’t make me a monster”; “There’s a fine line between devout and mad”).
There are, admittedly, a handful of spots where things felt entirely too perfectly coincidental or convenient – where I went “oh come ON!” and rolled my eyes. But that’s only because the rest of the book felt so well-assembled, that these moments felt as though the author thought that taking the time to connect the dots through subtlety would have taken too long, so a hurriedly convenient shortcut was taken. Still, there weren’t that many of these and they were the few spots of tarnish in an otherwise delightful (and delightfully dark) construction. I”m eager to see the next book in the series…
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