340 pages
English language
Published Nov. 17, 2018 by Wednesday Books.
Raised to be a warrior, seventeen-year-old Eelyn fights alongside her Aska clansmen in an ancient, rivalry against the Riki clan. Her life is brutal but simple: train to fight and fight to survive. Until the day she sees the impossible on the battlefield her brother, fighting with the enemy the brother she watched die five years ago.
A fairly conventional love story with a lot, lot of violence that makes the protagonist very hard to relate to. It can be effective to involve a character in a war, but Eelyn kills dozens of people, which is just cartoonish. Story doesn't cover a lot of ground and is generally predictable.
The prose is generally very well done.
Romeo and Julia turned fantasy Vikings. I got a thing for Vikings abd strong bloodthirsty women. I loved the beginning of the story, and the writing was superb. But there are some things that could have been better.
There were no boats! Why were there no boats, suddenly this became more Celtic/Germanic. Boats seem to be pretty important, if you write about vikings. Also some things were really confusing, how often did they have fighting season? Every 5 years? Why did it sound like you have them every year??? And well, why exactly did the brother choose to go and kill his own tribe? Little bit drastic, huh? It would have been nice, if things like these would have been addressed. But I read it, I loved the beginning and the rest was nice. So, definitely worthwhile.
