Thank you Netgalley for my advanced copy of The Unburied Queen. I found this novel incredibly difficult to get into and I unfortunately did not finish this book. I just couldn’t push myself to continue with it.

The Unburied Queen sounded like a promising novel and something that I would have thoroughly enjoyed. However, I found it lacklustre. Particularly the first chapter which is filled with so much information it becomes distracting and boring. The first chapter just dragged on and on and on.

I wish I could have enjoyed this novel because it seemed like something I normally would have liked a lot. It is for this reason I rate this novel 1 out of 5 stars.

I like the story idea, I wasn't a huge fan of how it was done. The map feels very child-oriented and practically unneeded as it doesn't really show much. The writing style switches between basic and trying too hard to show off use of a wide vocabulary.

The Unburied Queen is a NA fantasy about a magical, sentient island sustained by the lives of royals. 20-year-old Loon is one of the islands princesses. After a storm takes away everything she has known, both magical and mundane threats lurk around every corner.

I really liked the overall premise of this - a magical, sentient island that consumes its royals' life force. There was some great fantastical and horror-esque potential here. However, I had a few issues with the execution.

One of those starts right at the beginning - the first chapter. The first chapter starts with two characters just sitting and having a long conversation. While I understand this is to rely information about the world to the reader, it does nothing to suck the reader into the story. In the second chapter, there are new characters introduced that also just wait and talk. It would have been more exciting to start out with some action - perhaps Loon going into the Pond instead of just having a long-wided conversation about it first.

Another issue was the plot in general for me. The current Heart of the Island, Queen Petrel, is unburied, which is to say she isn't sustaining the island with magic anymore. After that, it is unclear which of the royals will become the next Heart. Then there is a plot of a magician to usurp and kill all the Royals in which the commoners are also involved. This made absolutely no sense to me since you would think they want the island to actually flourish which it only does if a royal becomes the Heart. Then, all the royals are killed until only Loon remains. Why would Loon not want to save her siblings? If not for an emotional connection, then to make sure she's not the only option for the sacrifice. It would have been very interesting to see Loon find her siblings and a more organic way to introduce her to Kala.

Loon's character was another negative for me. Her entire arc was about finding a man and procreating. Nowadays, that is a highly problematic arc for a female protagonist. She had no actual objectives beyond that and at some point, becoming Heart. I'm unclear why she waited so long to do it, since the Island was slowly deteriorating. Her sensuality was a fine character trait but she needed some sort of agency. Her actions seemed very immature for someone in their twenties, she behaved more like a lovestruck teenager in my opinion. The only characters I liked were Nomor and Peter and I thought the disability and bisexual representation was well done.

Another thing that was lacking for me was the worldbuilding. There were a few things that weren't explained. For example, we are told that wizards are corrupted by reading Manuscripts, yet we are never told what the Manuscripts actually are or why they corrupt their reader. Then there was a bit of a cultural mess - we had a Middle Eastern genie and a European dragon, the names ranged from biblical to made up to bird names. Some consistency would have been nice here.

We also had time jumps every few chapters which was in some cases unnecessary and in others confusing. While this book is billed as NA, the prose level is YA. The sentence structure was repeated a lot and some passages were worded awkwardly, e.g. the author using phrases like "falling on my butt" quite frequently.

All in all, the overall concept was great but the execution was sadly lacking. To be publishable, the book needs to undergo a lot of editing. I ended up giving it 2/5 stars.

The idea was good, but the book in general is too confuse. Some things are too elaborate, some are way too fast. Again the idea was good but I didn’t like the way it was written.

I went into this one with low expectations and was completely blown away. The Unburied Queen centers around Loon, a hidden royal who’s in the running with the rest of her siblings to become the next Heart of the island. The Heart is responsible for maintaining the magic and the balance of the island, submerged in the middle of a pond. The premise of the book is incredibly unique, the pace is pretty well grounded, and the world building is fantastic! There were some aspects I would have liked to see explained or expanded upon (like why it was necessary for the royals to remain hidden) but overall the writing style, plot and characters all pulled me in and captivated me! The deaf representation also made my heart very happy!

"The Unburied Queen": 3⭐

(Unpaid Review: thank you to @netgalley, @capes and the publishers for allowing me to read this eArc copy in exchange for a review).

What's the most interesting world you've ever visited in a while? Was it Ketterdam? Was it Wonderland? Or perhaps, Neverland? Well, you should definitely visit this one!

'The Unburied Queen' is a story of disability, brotherhood and family bonds. While I did like the concept of this book a lot, I felt a certain difficulty in keeping up with the matters at hand.

However, this is a quick read and very enjoyable! I recommend it to everyone who's starting fantasy!

I really tried to like this book, but unfortunately that feeling never came to me through out reading this book. The concept and the world building of the story was interesting, but the execution fell flat for me, and I find myself getting quite restless while reading this due to the writing and the confusing time jumps. That being sad, I would definitely try and read it again if some revisions are made.

Thank you to the Author and to NetGalley for providing me with an eArc in exchange for an honest review!

I loved the premise for this book, however the execution fell short for me!

I found the world-building to be confusing at times and due to the number of characters I found myself getting confused on who was who at times!

That being said I believe the world that is built is beautiful and the rep in this read is written well!!

The idea behind this book is interesting and promises an exciting and unique storyline; unfortunately, the execution is where it falls short.

First of all, the world that the author creates is extremely beautiful. The descriptive writing surrounding the world building allows you to get sucked into the pages, and it really felt at times like I could smell, see, hear and taste everything that was being described.

The disability rep is something that should be commended; it was written very well and was refreshing to see in a fantasy book.

As a whole, the magic system was interesting and quite unique, but was let down by a few factors.

The characters felt flat and unmemorable, the info dump in the first chapter is unforgiving and doesn’t serve the story well, and the pages dragged quite a bit.

In general, I’m not a massive fan of time jumps in books, and each chapter of this has a jump in some way or another. If it’s not a jump, then it’s an unnecessary clarification of what time of day it is, which I found distracting.

Overall, an incredibly promising story, but needs a little more refining.

Thank you Netgalley for giving me an opportunity to review this book.

This book took me around a week to finish and I believe this is the first time I've read a metaphysical fantasy book. Like many books within the fantasy genre, the beginning was incredibly difficult to get through. Even in the end, I was still perplexed by almost everything. Despite the fact that there were so many information and people to follow, there were so many time skips that my brain hurt. The romance did not appeal to me in the least. It felt forced, and while I understand why, the execution wasn't the best.

This book seemed like I was reading a trilogy, but it was all in one book, thus there were so many info dump that I couldn't grasp it. Although the details were difficult to understand, I did enjoy it.

Firstly, thank you so much @simonschusterca for this ARC!!
If you love fantasy and world building with tons of magic and magically beings, go get this book on October 23rd!!
This book was super interesting because it takes a very decolonized look at fantasy and magic and it has some really great diverse characters!
There’s characters of colour, queer characters, deaf and hard of hearing characters… it was amazing seeing so many groups represented in this fantasy world!
It is super world building heavy so the book was a little slow for my personal liking but the middle and end were action packed and really mysterious.
I could hardly put the book down after the first couple hundred pages because I just wanted to know what was happening!
I definitely recommend if that sounds at all interesting to you because I think it’s something that a lot of the fantasy genre is missing!

Some positive things I really liked about this book were the disability rep for deafness, the world-building, and the magic system! If you enjoy books with those sorts of things, you may like this book BUT it has ALOT going on. It's hard to follow and so much information. The characters are okay. I didn't really care about most of them except for Slugs. Slugs is one of the characters I liked from the book and Kala might be the one I like second best.

Loon, however, is the protagonist and I did not like her character at all. As you can imagine, it also made it hard for me to enjoy this book more. For starters, she comes off as very immature and underdeveloped. She. doesn't. really. do. anything. I definitely would not call her the heroine of the story whatsoever and by the end of it, I didn't feel she'd shown any growth as a character which would have been amazing to see. I also couldn't really figure out what the race of Loon was exactly. I think the culture and heritage of Loon could have been represented much better. Rep the culture - even in books! If it's made up or a fantasy race, you can still represent it in my opinion. Maybe the intent was not to dance around heritage or culture, but that's how it came across to me. Loon didn't even really seem to have an appreciation or love for her curly hair.

Also while this is an arc, 'm hoping that perhaps some more revisions and edits take place before publishing! The writing is very hard to follow at times for several reasons like with a few time jumps that happen suddenly, but some revisions would surely help with that. It would also help to shorten this book. It's incredibly long and it dragged on at times. I had to start to skim reading through some of it to get to the meat and potatoes. Furthermore, if you like happy endings, this is not going to be the book for you. I don't always need a happy ending, but this one just didn't work for me. I think overall the story has so much promise and could really be that 5 stars read provided some of those revisions take place.

Thank you to NetGallery for sending me an e-arc for my honest review.

This book had great promise. I was really intrigued by the premise and was excited to jump into it. Unfortunately it needs a bit of work. The world building was clever but needed a little ironing out and more clarification. Also a little bit of more character development was needed.

I would like to start this review by thanking Netgalley and the author of this book, Capes, for this eARC (my very first ARC, yay!)

The Unburied Queen is a unique story, I’ve never read anything remotely similar to this; Capes, the author deserves points for originality but, originality is not everything that a book needs to have in order to succeed. Let’s break down the (in my opinion) pros and cons of this book:

PROS

The world of The Unburied Queen and the world building:
Capes created a world that feels like it’s a character in it’s own right and, if I’m being honest, the world of The Unburied Queen is a better main character than Loon, the actual main character of the book.
Also, the idea that in order to survive and thrive, the Land needs to syphon the life force/energy/magic of off it’s ruler is quite nice and not overly done.
Disability within the story:
I quite liked they way the author wrote a character’s disability, her deafness was apart of who she was and not who she was.

CONS

Info dump:
There’s a major into dump right on the first chapter, which, in my opinion, is a recipe for disaster. I get that some things need to be said in order to grasp the reader’s attention right from the beginning, but that was a bit too much.
Length:
When I saw the page count I did a double take, this book is waaay too long. It’s one thousand a hundred and fourteen pages long, yeah, that’s right, 1114. At times the reading drags and, every few chapters I had to take some time to breath. Sometimes you need time to develop a story, but in this book we have instances that we get more of the same and it gets old pretty quickly.
Characters:
They are boring. Pure and simple. I felt pretty lukewarm about all of them. It’s not that they give off a similar ~vibe~ , they are actually quite diverse but, because I felt very meh about all of them, they eventually became a big indiscernible lump. They are alright I guess, but they are not memorable.

Overall, I will give this book 3 stars. Although The Unburied Queen didn’t work for me I can see where the author wanted to go with their story, the premise was intriguing but the delivery was lacking.

This review was also posted on my Goodreads page

The Unburried Queen is very unique, and I mean that in a very good way. It took me a bit to get into, but once I did, it wouldn’t leave my mind. I didn’t have time to binge read it like I would have wanted to and whenever I set it down to go do something else, I constantly wanted to dive back in and find out what was happening with Lune, Kala, Peter, Nomar, Slugs(and yes her name is slugs, I loved her and I think you will as well), and all the other amazing characters. I couldn’t stop speculating about the plot and what was going to happen next.

The whole book, you were like where is this going, how is this going to end, and then once you read the ending, it was a big wow factor. It ended in a way you wouldn’t expect, but you’d expect at the same time. I know that probably doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but if you read this book you will understand. And I hope, that makes you want to read this book and understand what I’m talking about because I loved this novel and enjoyed reading it.

I’m not normally a fan of time jumps, but in this book I really liked it. They were written well and you could tell it was necessary for the story. In a lot of fantasy books, it takes place in weeks or months, but The Unburried Queen took place over many years and it felt a lot more realistic.

Honestly, the whole book felt a lot more realistic than the average fantasy book They has fantasy problems and lived in a fantasy world with fantasy creatures, but it felt realistic. Their thoughts, feelings, how they reacted to problems, and just overall how they acted, interacted, and spoke with one another felt so much like the real world. It was refreshing to see in a fantasy novel because a lot of times it can be hard to connect to the characters, but theses were so easy to because they didn’t act like the typical fantasy character. There was mentions of body hair, disability rep, and love that wasn’t the average fairytale love, but love that would be more likely to happen in our world.

The imagery and world building were astounding. It felt as if you were actually there, that you could smell everything, see everything in vivid colors, and touch and feel what the characters were.

I thinks fans of the Night Circus will like this book because of how it is written, but I also think that this is a book for all lovers of any fantasy. There is an adorable, yet sometimes, annoying bat, a magical island, fickle, but fun creatures. There is an amazingly well written antagonist that you will want to hate. You also get to see multiple sides of the story and why a person did what they did. This is yet another example of something realistic. Im our world, not everything is usually cut and dry and in some cases there are more than one side to the story. Not in all cases, as you can see in the Unburried Queen, but in some. I for sure recommend this book! Go preorder, if you’re seeing this before it’s published, and go buy if you’re seeing after publication!

Thank you to NetGallery for sending me an earc for an honest review!

Capes writes a visually stunning world with interesting characters, though I didn’t completely love Loon’s character, she was hard to relate to and I wish she had done more for herself and siblings.

I like that there was inclusion of a disability that didn’t seemed forced.

There seemed to be a lot of information that took a lot to remember. I didn’t love this book it could of been a lot better but it was interesting.

"He couldn't tell if to love was to fight, or to suurender, or to tire." From The Unburied Queen

2 stars

This book is a thick fog of confusion, with what seems like a few forced love stories throughout. There was a lot of insta-love going on. How does the magic work? We don't know. What does the actul geography look like? Shrug. Why were royals kept a secret before assasains? Who knows. If you can get past that, there is some good writing. It will take you awhile to figure out what it is saying at first. There is a LOT going on, without an explaination of what things mean. SO many things not explained that drove me nuts. There are some red flags with how Loon's hair is described, how it has (?) to be tangled because of the texture, and the way they handled signing and bisexuality; it seemed like it was added as a last minute gimmick. Kala insisting he wasn't an assassin when he was in fact killing people, just the ones on the other side, drove me mad. This was one book I was so happy to be done with; I would have certainly stopped reading if I wasn't reviewing.

Thank you to the publisher, author, and NetGalley for an ARC in exchnge for an honest review.

Please note that this review is not spoiler-free. It contains many spoilers. I have tried to conceal major spoilers, but some are hinted at.

I love the overall concept of this book. The world is rich and unique. The idea of the sentient island is intriguing. However, I feel like this book needs a major rewrite to be workable. It also needs more thorough proofreading. Problems start in the first chapter, which begins as an info dump. It is possible to give the reader quantities of information early on and make it interesting, but this is usually an exception to the rule. Generally, it works better to have the story move forward through action and have information be given as the plot moves, but here we have a conversation where the characters just sit and talk as an excuse to feed information to the reader. One possibility might have been to begin with Loon bathing in the pond and the image of her mother, as the Heart. It’s intriguing, it draws the reader in and makes you want to know more and we start with a stunning visual image.

I also felt it was very difficult to relate to Loon as a character. My first impression of her was that she was immature, complaining to her father about why people couldn’t know that she was royalty. And it wasn’t clear why she wanted people to know. It seemed like this was just supposed to be foreshadowing for later events in the book when people wanted to assassinate her and there was a very obvious reason people shouldn’t know. But why the royals had been hidden in the past, when there didn’t seem to be any controversy around them was not clear. I wanted to like Loon, but I didn’t feel like I could get past the surface with her. I feel like having her written in the first person might have helped with this. I also felt like her name really didn’t suit her. She didn’t have any qualities that I associate with Loons, so I wondered about the choice of name. She and all of her siblings are named after birds but I think birds are mentioned once in the whole book. Loon doesn’t seem to have any affinity for birds. What was the purpose of the bird names? Loons live near freshwater lakes but no freshwater lakes are ever mentioned on the Island. Loon seems to have more of an affinity for plants and flowers. She’s drawing flowers to her all the time, but she has no relationship to birds at all. Consider a name change? Another option would be for Loon to have bird allies, but that would involve adding a great deal to the book. There would need to be an ecosystem where loons could live. (Is Cloudspy cool enough?) And a freshwater lake...

I also found Loon to be a passive character in many ways. She never makes any attempt to save the lives of her siblings. It seems that Dremza knows who they are (or at least some of them.) If the assassins can find out who the Royals are, then Loon should have been able to. Why didn’t she try to find them so collectively they could have tried to protect each other? Why is no better protection being offered to the Royals? Loon’s goal in life seems to be to find a guy and reproduce so that she can go into a living death state and support the Island and there will be an heir to continue her line to keep up this vital purpose. This is a terrible motivation for a main character, especially a female character. It would have made more sense to attempt to save her siblings so the Island would have had more options. Because that heir is going to have to survive and have children of its own too. The logic of her choice feels flawed. Why didn’t she even try to save her siblings? It’s not discussed in the book. With cleverness and determination, she might have found her siblings and it would have been exciting to see them meet. I felt cheated that they were all dead before we, the readers, had a chance to meet them. Loon often needs rescuing and is unable to rescue herself. When she knew that her life was in mortal danger after the Queen was unburied why didn’t she attempt any training in martial skills or survival skills? She comes across as a damsel in distress far too often. I would like to see her rewritten as an active heroine who can take care of herself and make stronger decisions to protect herself and those she loves. It might have been more interesting if Kala and Loon had both been trying to save her siblings from the assassins and that was how they met, instead of the way they meet in the current version with Loon mostly naked in the orchard. She could have been stalking him trying to protect her siblings and instead discovers that he’s trying to save them. Instead, she’s often terrified and in need of saving. She doesn’t do much for herself other than consult magical people and creatures. That and try really hard to make heirs… I would like to see Loon become a more active character. That doesn’t mean she needs to lose her warmth and her sensuality, but she needs some strength and initiative. As the main character in a tale where she is supposed to be the hero, I really felt like Loon needed some kind of arc. She doesn’t have one. She really doesn’t change much or grow throughout the course of the novel. If she starts off immature, at least let her grow and have some kind of hero or heroine’s journey.

The physical description of Loon comes far too late in the book. I can’t tell if she is a brownish white person or if she is meant to be coded as non-white. With her connection to the island, I feel like she might be coded as Indigenous, but it’s a little hard to tell. I can’t tell where the people on the Island come from. Are they all born there? Are they all Indigenous? Did some of them come from somewhere else? It’s unclear if all the Royals have a special connection to the Island or only the Royal who is taken into the Pond. Race seems very unclear, so I’m a little unclear about how race is represented in the novel. I can’t tell if there are multiple races on the island or not. Also, people can have textured hair that isn’t tangled. As someone with curly hair, this bothered me. Loon, learn to take care of your hair! It will end up a complete disaster if you don’t (tangles, mats, breakage…)

Nomor and Loon’s bond is also not very well-established in the beginning. I found it difficult to understand what made them such close friends for a long time. I would have liked to have seen a bonding moment with them at the beginning of the book. I found Nomor somewhat more interesting and appealing as a character than Loon, but she was also difficult to become attached to. Again, I wonder if this book might have benefitted from first-person narration. I found myself comparing scenes between Nomor and Loon to scenes between Gale and Katniss and Katniss and Prim at the beginning of the Hunger Games and how much stronger those bonds felt. That novel is a good example of establishing bonds between characters and giving the reader enough information about the world without feeling like an info dump (the plot keeps moving but the information is being delivered at the same time). Nomor felt like a flat background character for much of the beginning of the novel. I would have liked to see her established more quickly. There are some great scenes with Nomor and Loon later on, but the bond needs to be established earlier.

I also went back and forth between liking and disliking Nomor. I thought there was going to be a logical or an intuitive reason for her dislike of Slugs, but that went nowhere. It seemed to be engineered so there could be a little lesson about trust thrown at the readers in the end, which just made the epilogue even more depressing. I enjoyed her relationship with the Dragon, which was one of the highlights of the book.

This book is billed as an adult fantasy, but it’s YA level. The themes are YA--mainly coming of age, concerns about first dates, potential marriage, etc. I’m not sure what would make this an adult fantasy other than a couple of f-bombs and some light sexuality. To my mind, it's not enough to make it more than older-level YA. The prose level is also YA. Characters who are supposed to be in their 30s still read like they are in their 20s to me. There is some nudity and lust but there are no explicit sex scenes (something else that would lead to an adult rating). Even though characters age into adulthood, the writing level and the immature behavior of many of the characters make this book read like YA.

The dead parents trope is a YA marker as well. Both Kala and Loon are coming of age, no matter how old they are. Their behavior reads younger than their years for almost the entire novel. Only the last part of the book, which is basically an epilogue, has the main characters acting maturely. Slugs was the only character with a significant role that I felt acted with maturity on a consistent basis.

It took a long time for Kala and Peter to grow on me. I disliked them both in the chapter where they were introduced. I never understood why Nomor rejected Peter so thoroughly. I guess it was because he was keeping the secret about Loon being Royal at the time, feeling resentful about it, and the Dragon knew? And at the time I'm pretty sure his bisexuality had yet to be introduced. Peter is highly unlikeable until it's just about too late.

The thing with Groog's son being called "Groog's son" was annoying. I disliked having to read "Groog's son" over and over again.

I felt like the five-year time skip was problematic. (Some of the other time skips were as well). I feel like it disrupted the flow of the narrative. It takes place right after Nomor’s scene with the dragon wad disappointing. She says they are “fucked” but doesn’t explain why and then we skip five years. We never learn what the dragon communicated to her. I felt cheated by that scene.

The magic system is not well-explained, at times The magicians eventually lose their minds from reading the Manuscripts, but it’s not clear what the Manuscripts are or why they prematurely age the magicians or cause them to lose their sanity. Where did the Manuscripts come from? How long have they been in existence? Why do people want to become Mages so badly that they are willing to prematurely age themselves and sacrifice their sanity? I felt like this was borderline ableist in terms of mental health issues.

Why is the Genie blue? It’s too much like the Genie from Disney’s take on Aladdin. And why make him a chauvinist? That seemed pointless. It wasn’t funny, A character can be funny without being crude to women. Consider looking at other types of trickster characters who are more subtle and clever. (Currently, TV’s Loki is a good example of this.) He gets a bit better toward the end but there is no reason to introduce him as a horrible shallow character and then improve him after the story is effectively over. Make him a solid character from the start. And if he's not a Genie call him something else? How do these people know what a Genie is if they live on an isolated island in some world that I assume isn't ours?

Slugs was a really interesting character. Quite possibly the best in the book. I enjoyed her immensely. I’m not sure if the reveal about the slugs not giving her magic comes too late. For a long time, I was really confused as they didn’t seem to fit with the other magical gifts that came with the Storm, which were clearly useful to the bearer in some way, even if slightly annoying. I couldn’t figure out what magic the slugs bestowed. Then finally the reveal…

The reveal about King Godwit was not a surprise to me and I’m not a person who usually figures out the mystery in a book. I usually don’t try because I like to be surprised. I waited far too long for the main characters to figure it out and I was frustrated by their slowness. I don’t know if they need to figure it out sooner or if the reader should be let in on the secret for the sake of dramatic irony. But it made me feel like the main characters really weren’t very smart. It really bothered me that Loon never figured it out. To me, this said that she lacked intelligence and sensitivity. She never understood how much she was hurting Kala and her children.

I appreciated the inclusion of a disabled character in the book and that there was a deaf community, also that other characters were willing to learn sign to include Nomor and embarrassed when they did not know sign to communicate with her. Also, there was some ableist language in at least one other instance the (use of the word “crazy).

I’m not really a fan of the casual swearing in this book. I don’t mind swearing in literature when it’s well done and it can definitely add a punch to the dialogue, but it feels clumsy here. (I mean it's great when it's used really effectively and feels natural.) The only character who I felt swore effectively was Slugs.

There are some grammatical errors and the prose could flow more smoothly overall. There are missing words or words that appear in places they shouldn’t. In many places sentences could be better-structured or words could be chosen with greater care. Too many adjectives in places. “marigold light” is used far too much, for example. (If you want to use metaphors or similes for dawn and twilight, try looking at Lord of the Rings. Tolkien manages to do this very effectively, but it’s difficult to do and you are better off not using any metaphors for these than using ones that don’t work, better to just say things are orange or yellow). In other areas, there are beautiful passages of prose that are a joy to read, however. The quality of the prose is mixed and needs to be evened out. The dialogue needs strengthening. This book needs a good proofreader.

Peter’s bisexuality is introduced too late in the story when he clearly knew he was bi much earlier and so did Kala (he had a love affair with their neighbor’s son and Kala knew about it). This creates a love triangle that is important for the plot, so it’s not fair to the reader to hide that Peter is bi for so long.

I question the term “unburied”. The queen is immersed in water. She’s not buried. I can see how “un-immersed” would be an awkward term, but it is a bit odd to call her buried when she’s in water and fully visible.

The Island seems small. People walk from one area to another. But people hardly ever go to the sea. No one spends any time at the beach. No one seems to eat fish. This seems really strange for people who live on an apparently small island. I would expect people who live on an island to be intimately tied to the sea, to thrive off of an ocean-based economy. If there is something about the Island that makes this impossible it needs to be more clearly stated.

The names of the people are strange overall. Why are there so many Biblical names? I’ve read books like Naomi Novik’s where it makes sense that characters have names that are tied to Judaism, but the mix of fictional names, bird names, and Biblical names doesn’t make sense here and feels very incongruous. If the Island is so important to these people, I would expect them to have names related to the Island.

The frequent use of the word “butt” really got on my nerves. It’s such an awkward word and there are many better constructions where you can say the same thing without having to use it (unless it’s a sex scene and it wasn’t used in any sex scenes, but even then you might find a word that sounds better). You can hoist people by their thighs (or just hoist them up), a character can “fall backward” and we will get the picture. The language moves jarringly between eloquent and awkward constructions.

I would also suggest revisiting the outline because at times the story stalls. The action just stops and the story meanders. I enjoy a slow-burning read. I like the idyllic scenes in the lemon grove. But the pacing just feels off at times. The action of the plot doesn’t rise in stages the way it should. I think the author needs to look at story structures and find one that fits the story they want to tell and follow it.

I’m extremely bothered by the female-sacrifice theme of the novel, at least that’s how I saw it for most of the book until it was finally revealed to be otherwise (just human sacrifice, not necessarily female). There is also no mention of a King being allowed to remarry. It seems he gets to have lovers but he can’t take a new wife, as far as I can tell). Why couldn’t the bats seed the island so everyone could be “Royal” and then the Island could collect what it needs in small amounts from everyone so one person doesn’t have to sacrifice themselves? Then everyone would feel more connected to the Island and no one would have to live in misery like the Royal family. I feel like in terms of the theme of humans being connected to their environment this would make more sense. Also, the bloodfruitbat legend suggests a time where the Island and its people were able to get along just fine without a Heart, so why does the Island really need one? Maybe it’s a human sacrifice theme and not a female sacrifice theme, but it would be a better novel if all the humans on the Island were giving up something of themselves to support it, rather than just one person and one family making a massive sacrifice. It comes across as a really bizarre environmental metaphor. This would also leave us with a happy ending if things changed and everyone became connected to the Island, giving a little of their life essence to its magic.

I really liked this passage, “She believed it to be the threshold that led to Beneath the Island, where her tender dreams, trampled by reality, had taken refuge long ago.”

I felt depressed by the ending of the book. I would have put it down long before I finished it if I hadn’t promised to review it in exchange for a free copy. To be honest, I was really turned off by Loon in the first chapter, although at other times I liked her and very much enjoyed Slugs. When I saw where the plot was headed and that Loon wasn't ever going to grow into an active heroine I didn't want to keep reading.

I feel like this book has a great deal of promise and many strengths, but it needs to be reworked in order to be publishable. The novel’s greatest strength is in the world-building. The Island is a vibrant, well-developed world. Slugs is a unique and well-developed character. The plot and the other characters need work, especially Loon. Loon is the novel’s greatest flaw because she is not an active protagonist. Aspects of the writing need attending to. I’ve focused on problems here because that’s what I’d do if I was editing and I wouldn’t have taken the time to provide feedback if I didn’t think the book had promise. There are many intriguing threads here, but they aren’t quite coming together. (If this was a paid edit it would be more organized…) I think this novel could turn into something really great, but it needs major revision to be publishable (and proofreading is included in that). Extensive revision and polishing would make this a much stronger novel.

This book was a lot of back and forth for me. I found myself loving it and hating it at the same time. The constant switch between different characters POVs really frustrated me. I would’ve much preferred if it remained just the two main protagonists. The story in the beginning was a lot to take in, I found that there was a lot to remember when it came to all the different lands and things. And I was also a bit disappointed with the ending. Definitely was an interesting read.

I just want to say a big thank you to Netgalley and Capes for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Capes weaved an intricate world with a brilliant magic system. I loved the flow of the writing but I would really like to know how she decided to name her characters and places. Particularly the name of the Cities.

The flow of the writing was interrupted sometimes when every chapter, it tells you how time has passed. "That afternoon","two weeks later." I feel that that's something that was shown and told in the writing itself and didn't need to be announced at the beginning of every chapter.

The only character I really ended up liking was Kala.
I found Loon too boring and Peter's Jealousy about Kala and Loon's relationship soured his character. Nomor's suspicion and general dislike of everyone also kinda took away from her character.

This book was just...so sad.
It felt as if no one was granted a happy ending.
I know not every book needs a happy ending but it was just one thing after another.

All in all, I loved the world Capes built and the magic system that runs it. I just wish at least one character had a happy ending.