I read this quite awhile ago now. Probably about two months ago. I can still remember a fair bit about it though, which means it must’ve been pretty good. Or at least memorable. (And fortunately I did cheat and write a small review of it on Goodreads, so that refreshed my memory.)
The plot doesn’t fit into a typical kind of plot. It’s not a quest. It’s not coming of age. It’s not any one thing I can particularly point to. Basically Yeine is summoned the kingdom/city/palace of Sky by her grandfather. He names her an heir, but she’s not the only one. So she’s in competition with her cousins, neither of whom are very nice people. And it turns out her family, the ruling family, has some gods locked up and kept as slaves.
It’s the characters that really sell this book. I can like and admire Yeine. The dark god Nahadoth is pretty darned cool. And the child god Sieh is just lovable and awesome. They are people (gods) that I want to get to know more about and spend more time with. Which is a good thing, because this is a trilogy!
It’s kind of hard for me to say there are anime influences. Because I really feel that there are.. but other than Sieh playing with his balls, I can’t quite put my finger on what. And I wonder if there aren’t subtler anime-ish things in here that I’m picking up on subconsciously and that’s making me like the book even more than I consciously think I do.
Um.. yea. So, kind of hard to tell you what the book’s about, but some of the characters are worth getting to know.
There was one part that confused me somewhat. And this may be a bit of a spoiler, so look away now.
Yeine has this erotic moment with a god and then later he’s like ‘no, I can’t, it’ll be bad, and destroy you/the world, whatever’. And I’m like.. didn’t you already? So there was some distinction there that wasn’t immediately obvious to me while reading it. Which after the fact I can only think means he’s got more self-control than a certain vampire who can’t even a kiss a girl without wanting to chomp on her.
I join others in waiting for book 2!
