Reviews

I'm conflicted about this book. Could I not put it down? Yes. Am I happy with the ending? Not really. Was it pleasantly eerie and made my skin crawl at some points? Absolutely. I loved it but at the same time want so much more!

There's a slight lull towards the end that I wish had more creepy stuff in it to keep the momentum of the story going. Still a great book. T. Kingfisher is always a good read.

ivan_reads's review against another edition

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dark tense fast-paced

3.5

penguin_emperor_of_the_north's review against another edition

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4.0

It was pretty good, fast paced read. It did a very good job of conveying the suspense of entering another world where you don't know what or why this is happening, how anything works and you suddenly realize that something is in there hunting you. Or that might just inadvertently kill you without thinking.

And that part is very well done, the scenes after the reveal of the other world are very consistently tense.

One thing I didn't like was the constant attempt at jokes. I think the intent was that Kara and Simon are cracking jokes to break the tension or in a 'if you don't laugh, you'll cry' kind of way. And it works about half the time but sometimes the jokes get so obnoxious that it really pulls me out of the story. And the frequency gets high enough that it started reminding me of that kind of person who can never take anything seriously and the jokes get less and less funny fast. Though, due to the strong character voice, the jokes stayed tolerable if frustrating.

The book did a good job of fleshing out both Simon and Kara both through the jokes but also Kara's point of view pulling on her career or random past events. Her PoV was very stream of consciousness that really brought her to life.

I also really liked that the book does give some answers about what's happening, enough to get a pretty decent view of it but it's all strictly limited to Kara and Simon's thoughts and speculations so what happened and the nature of the universe are all left open.