My first impression of this book was incredibly positive. The writing was so atmospheric and the slow burn character building just gave me so much time to get naturally invested in the characters. Tempe comes across as a survivor in a harsh world that is barely staying afloat and she has made a meager living diving into the ruins of the world that once was to find trinkets for cash so she can pay Palindromena to revive her sister. Unlike many other stories where the initial goal is to just reunite a family, Tempe just wants answers into the deaths of her parents and her callousness towards Eylsea, her sister, is built upon years of being alone without access to anyone who might know anything.
We meet Lor, who lives/works on the island and is in charge of Elysea's revival. Not a lot of information comes in about him at first, though you get the sense that he is not letting on as much as he should other than the fact that he lied about who he was when he meets Tempe. For most of the adventure, Lor remains this black hole that only exists to coax the girls back to Palindromena and his bigger motivations for doing so didn't come to light until way too late for the pacing of the story.
Up until about Chapter 37, the pacing of the story had been pretty steady. One of a number of twists is reveled and this is where the book veered wildly away from it's original path. All of the characters seem to truly lose their minds and even when new characters are introduced with a very specific set of restrictions, they suddenly and anticlimactically throw them out the window without any further explanation. I found myself incredibly frustrated with the last bit of this book because it just felt so rushed and somewhat nonsensical. Changing the rules of the world you spent so long building to fit the ending you want in less than 50 pages is ridiculous. It made it feel like the journey didn't matter.
I was left with so many questions and avenues left unexplored. The page count dedicated to deep water exploration and day-to-day life was wasted when the things mentioned meant nothing. What was the importance of the plant Tempe found in the first chapter? Nothing.
Ultimately, this is a story I mostly enjoyed and was 5 stars until the very end. There is some great and thoughtful dialogue in here that moved me, but the way the chips fell was too rushed for the rest of the book.
We meet Lor, who lives/works on the island and is in charge of Elysea's revival. Not a lot of information comes in about him at first, though you get the sense that he is not letting on as much as he should other than the fact that he lied about who he was when he meets Tempe. For most of the adventure, Lor remains this black hole that only exists to coax the girls back to Palindromena and his bigger motivations for doing so didn't come to light until way too late for the pacing of the story.
Up until about Chapter 37, the pacing of the story had been pretty steady. One of a number of twists is reveled and this is where the book veered wildly away from it's original path. All of the characters seem to truly lose their minds and even when new characters are introduced with a very specific set of restrictions, they suddenly and anticlimactically throw them out the window without any further explanation. I found myself incredibly frustrated with the last bit of this book because it just felt so rushed and somewhat nonsensical. Changing the rules of the world you spent so long building to fit the ending you want in less than 50 pages is ridiculous. It made it feel like the journey didn't matter.
I was left with so many questions and avenues left unexplored. The page count dedicated to deep water exploration and day-to-day life was wasted when the things mentioned meant nothing. What was the importance of the plant Tempe found in the first chapter? Nothing.
Ultimately, this is a story I mostly enjoyed and was 5 stars until the very end. There is some great and thoughtful dialogue in here that moved me, but the way the chips fell was too rushed for the rest of the book.