A review by leavingsealevel
Days of Blood & Starlight by Laini Taylor
4.0
Deep thoughts on YA fantasy alert.
In a status update I said I liked this for the same reason I liked [b:Mockingjay|7260188|Mockingjay (The Hunger Games, #3)|Suzanne Collins|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1358275419s/7260188.jpg|8812783]. The hard-hitting yet not overdone message about war and violence. More specifically, the depiction of what happens when a rebel force becomes as inhumane as the entity they want to fight. That was what I took away from Mockingjay, and I found it to be a pretty grim message, in the end.
Days of Blood and Starlight is pretty grim too--in fact, much grimmer than I expected after reading the first book in the series, particularly with regards to children in war. But there's something that's absent in Mockingjay: another possibility for what resistance and rebellion can look like. An army of the marginalized and the survivors from both sides of the war, fighting back and maybe coming together to actually make something like hope. It's not pacifism or nonviolent resistance, not be a long shot. But it's something worth looking at all the same.
Maybe this is less realistic than the resistance in Mockingjay, who ultimately want to remake an unjust system to suit their needs.
Maybe it's more realistic.
In a status update I said I liked this for the same reason I liked [b:Mockingjay|7260188|Mockingjay (The Hunger Games, #3)|Suzanne Collins|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1358275419s/7260188.jpg|8812783]. The hard-hitting yet not overdone message about war and violence. More specifically, the depiction of what happens when a rebel force becomes as inhumane as the entity they want to fight. That was what I took away from Mockingjay, and I found it to be a pretty grim message, in the end.
Days of Blood and Starlight is pretty grim too--in fact, much grimmer than I expected after reading the first book in the series, particularly with regards to children in war. But there's something that's absent in Mockingjay: another possibility for what resistance and rebellion can look like. An army of the marginalized and the survivors from both sides of the war, fighting back and maybe coming together to actually make something like hope. It's not pacifism or nonviolent resistance, not be a long shot. But it's something worth looking at all the same.
Maybe this is less realistic than the resistance in Mockingjay, who ultimately want to remake an unjust system to suit their needs.
Maybe it's more realistic.