Sea of Strangers

Even though I tried to be as non spoilery as possible, this is the second book of a series and it is pertinent to read the first book. If I do spoil anything, I am sorry and it might be best to avoid this review until the first book has been read.

This series is just so cool, for lack of better words. I should find more words other than cool or awesome. Anyway. The entire world and the world building is seriously some of the best I've seen out of dystopian/fantasy books. Granted, I haven't read a lot of fantasy books but these books make me want to check out more.

This book is all about the travel and the preparation of war. So it was a tiny bit slow in places but that was to be expected. I'm not sure there are a lot of ways to make travel fun. But this book was important for the next (which I'm sure there will be). There are a lot of answers that get resolved from the first one.

There were two things from this book that really stood out for me that I feel I can talk about without spoiling the entire thing. One is the character growth from Khya. She is really blossoming and it makes me so incredibly happy. She is learning that accepting help is completely okay and failure doesn't mean the end. It means getting up and trying again. Character growth from a character is the one thing I look for when I start a series. Erica Cameron is nailing character growth so well.

The second thing that really stood out for me in this book was the concept of sexuality and how freely it flowed through the book. Asexulity came up more and more in the convorostations. I am not an expert on asexuality but I think it was awesome that sexuality could just be. This is an #ownvoices book, which I think makes it all the more awesome. Love really is love in this book. I must point out that there was a slur (in the language used by one of the characters, but a slur none the less) about a child that was asexual but it was quickly challenged.

Overall, I am totally hooked! I can't wait to get the next book in my hands. There are still a lot of things to be resolved and I'm anxious to see how Kyah continues to grow as a person. I also would love to see where Kyah and Tessen's relationship goes. I would highly recommend this series to anyone who is looking for their next #ownvoices fantasy series.