Interesting worldbuilding, but didn't quite live up to its promise
2.5 stars, rounded up.
This book is a little hard to summarize, which may be why the inside flap does such a poor job of it. We All Fall Down is an urban fantasy where magic is dying; several young people have the chance to restart a cycle that will bring magic back. I was so excited after reading the first few chapters, but unfortunately the rest of the book does not live up to its early promise.
Essentially, most of the book is just things happening to the protagonists, who have almost no agency of their own. Their motives are poorly defined, and we spend several hundred pages just waiting for the big events to happen. Apart from some discussion of gender and two characters figuring out names and/or pronouns that they prefer, there was almost no other growth shown.
This book was so close to being powerful. It /almost/ addresses police brutality, racism, gender identity, and sexuality, in a beautifully described fantasy world, but it falls just short of actually tackling any of these issues in a meaningful way.
Thank you to BookishFirst for this ARC.
This book is a little hard to summarize, which may be why the inside flap does such a poor job of it. We All Fall Down is an urban fantasy where magic is dying; several young people have the chance to restart a cycle that will bring magic back. I was so excited after reading the first few chapters, but unfortunately the rest of the book does not live up to its early promise.
Essentially, most of the book is just things happening to the protagonists, who have almost no agency of their own. Their motives are poorly defined, and we spend several hundred pages just waiting for the big events to happen. Apart from some discussion of gender and two characters figuring out names and/or pronouns that they prefer, there was almost no other growth shown.
This book was so close to being powerful. It /almost/ addresses police brutality, racism, gender identity, and sexuality, in a beautifully described fantasy world, but it falls just short of actually tackling any of these issues in a meaningful way.
Thank you to BookishFirst for this ARC.