Reviews and Comments

After loving The Sunbearer Trials, this one fell flat for me. Which was a disappointment with the character growth that occurred (but mostly in the last quarter of the book). It dragged on in parts to the point that I almost wanted to DNF it, but I wanted to see how the duology ended since I loved the first book. There were just too many "side quests" that they popped into on their way to Los Restos and those could have been slimmed down a lot to get the same points across. I think it's still worth a read if you liked the first one.

This book surprised me a bit. It gave cozy vibes but still tackles the large issue of grief and how there's no such thing as just moving on. There is not much world-building, and I would have liked to have a better grasp of things, but I understand wanting the focus to be on the characters and their grief. Contains found family, LGBTQ representation, and flawed characters.

I was not expecting the emotional roller coaster going into this book. The turn that the book takes about half way through that suddenly throws some magical realism into the plot threw me off a little. I would recommend this, but just make sure that you're up for a pretty bleak book.

This was not a revolutionary novel by any means, but I really appreciated how Ling Ma incorporated a lot of social issues created by capitalism throughout this book. She touches on immigration, worker's rights, outsourcing jobs, etc. It hit a little close to home at times "post-Covid" and honestly I was surprised to see that it was written before that. This is one of those books that you only see things from Candace's perspective, so as she's dealing with things or escaping scenarios, you don't get well-rounded endings for everything. Things happen, and the story moves on along with her life. If you don't llike loose ends, probably not one that I would recommend.

I really enjoyed this one. I'm always a little wary when it comes to middle grade books due to an overdoing (understandably) of hand-holding and explaining. This one didn't do much hand-holding and instead, Malia went full force in sharing the language and mythology and just explained along the way.

The whole book is completely filled with mythology, action, and growth encircling our FMC as she struggles with finding her place in the world and accepting the beliefs of the Island. This is one that I will be pushing my kids to read. If you're ever up for a middle grade read, pick this one up. I don't think you'll be disappointed.

I held off on this one for a while due to the length, but I'm glad I finally gave it a go.

There are a LOT of character introductions throughout the book, and listening to this on audiobook, I had to frequently pause to try to remember who was who. I would probably recommend pairing with the book itself to help with tracking if that's usually an issue for you as well when listening. It got a lot easier once some of the characters started dying haha.

I'm not usually one for high fantasy just due to the overall reading time that is usually involved. But I really appreciated that you have the whole story wrapped up in this book. While it is a part of a trilogy, this is very much a standalone book. I think if I had realized that, I would have picked it up sooner. Definitely glad that I gave it a chance.

#SFFBookClub read for August 2025.

This is not a book I think I would have picked out for myself outside of the book club, but I found it to be a surprisingly good read. It was a little hard to see the overall picture at first due to each chapter occurring with completely different characters and situations. It made it difficult to track when you would see the names of previous characters brought up in later chapters.

Everything kind of came together in the end and for me, and even the disjointed stories made sense. For me, at least. I'm not sure if this is one that I would regularly recommend to others due to the overall vibes. I don't know a lot of people that really enjoy Japanese dystopian stories with this structure.

Going to try to finish the August #SSFBookclub book before the end of the month. We'll see.

Overall this was a pretty decent read. You read about the coup and the broadcasts that are going out from "the General", but other than a few moments, there's not much of an impact on the siblings from the coup. Bhumi gets out pretty early on in the book, and her character took a deep nosedive for me. The chapters focusing on her just started to drag on and I felt like I was slogging through them.

With the coup going on and the Indians being burned in their shops or shot in their cabs in the beginning of the book, I was expecting a little more grim reality to be going on. The family is impacted by the coup, of coarse, but none of it really hits them in a majorly negative way. Both siblings lose friends that they cared for deeply, Bhumi has to move to the USA to escape the uncertainty, and Jaipal has a few run-ins with the military while running his shop. It felt more like reading a slice-of-life novel with a coup happening in the background. Not really one that I would recommend, but it wasn't horrible. I did get to learn a bit about Indian culture due to Batsha not breaking everything down into English. That's why I ultimately am giving this a 3.5 rating.

This was a chonker of a book that I feel really didn't need to be so big. I appreciate that Verghese was giving detailed background to the characters, but when you're 3/4 of the way through the massive book and wondering how everything comes together still, it's a little much.

I was glad to get an actual explanation behind the water curse that wasn't just some mystical occurrence. It was nice to have the reference of science helping to explain mysterious happenings that we hadn't previously been able to understand.

Overall, I would say the storyline was at least enjoyable enough, but I won't ever feel compelled to revisit this one in the future.