Due to all of the hype about this one book I decided to finally see what I was missing.
This is a fantasy novel between a slave and a soldier. In this world people live in fear of the Empire and Laia’s brother is taken away by a Mask (an elite soldier) after she witnesses her grandma and grandpa being killed, all because her brother was keeping secrets and had a dangerous sketchbook. Because she lost all her family in one night Laia goes on her own to save her brother from imprisonment. Meanwhile Elias (the Mask) is at ‘The Commandant of Blackcliff Academy’ where children are taught to kill from a young age. Elias wants to escape the school and he has everything planned – food, water, weapons – but what he doesn’t plan is taking part in the trial to become the new emperor…
The start of this book is very fast-paced and I was thrown into the book the minute I started reading it. This is a good thing because many books in YA take time to introduce the world, especially in fantasy, but it did leave me confused. The plot is so action packed and there are also so many twists and turns that will keep you on the edge of your chair. On the other hand there was a little romance between lots of the characters, but this was limited so it was bearable.
What I didn’t like was that little context was given because it left me with missing pieces of the puzzle. In addition I could foresee what was going to happen and I have already read books with similar plots so that I wasn’t that interested in carrying on reading.
Overall I think that the hype made me expect a lot from the book and I didn’t get that. Don’t get me wrong – I did enjoy the book. It ended on a cliff-hanger and left me wanting more.
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Buy this book at the Guardian Bookshop
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