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Fantasy Review: A Song of Wraiths and Ruin


I have to start off this review talking about how beautiful this book is. I have never been so enamored by a spine. It's the perfect green! It matches my curtains! I am happy to report that I adored this book, and so it can live in harmony in a prominent place on my bookshelf.

Usually YA books move at a heart-stopping pace. This book moved quickly and was full of action, but I didn't read with my heart in my throat, which was a nice change. I could put it down for the night and not need extra time for my heart rate to return to normal. The tension was still there, but every decision didn't feel like life and death. Though the characters were dealing with some really heavy topics, they still had time to watch the carnival, to fall in love and explore gardens and necropolises and a fascinating city.

Another piece of this book was was really well done was the character arcs. I loved reading these characters as they dealt with their issues. I thought it was great that Karina began as a very angry girl ... and at the end learned to use that anger, but wasn't forced to not be angry. She has a right to that anger! So I loved seeing her learn to use her anger in a positive way, and to learn how to move past it without discarding it. For Malik, I loved watching him learn how to accept his anxiety and to see the power in it. I think this was one very powerful message of hte book - you can be angry, anxious, and grieving, and still have agency, and choose your path forward. These powerful feelings don't have to be the only things to define people.

The book also dealt with some really large issues of oppression and the politics that enable it in a way that was both simple (the characters just talk about it, in lines here and there as they build their understanding of the world) and unlike anything I've read before. Roseanne Brown wove these real world problems in to this amazing fantasy world just by opening the character's eyes bit by bit, and giving them somewhere safe to process those feelings.

I think the only thing that I disliked about this book is that I knew upfront that it was a duology, and I had a hard time shaking that knowledge as I read. And this is not an issue with the book - more of a downside of reading genre fiction. Knowing that plot twists were coming made it hard to be patient and wait for them. It also distracted me as I read, wondering which problems would be pushed off to the second book, wondering what the big twist would be that they'd have to deal with later on... the fun part of the book was that I guessed wrong on all accounts! But now I have to be patient and wait for the next book to come out to find out what happens next...

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