Review Detail

The bittersweet is too good, ahhhh.

Cue two year time jump, sudden tragedy, everyone being cranky and oh look there’s pirates, Ying’s sister Nian and the Ye-kan the backup prince are now in charge while Ying and Ye-yang try to pull off something wild. It is chaos and I am here for it. As with the first book, I think the writing appeals to a younger YA audience (characters say exactly what they mean, and there’s clarification of all the subtext), but at a higher level these messy children stole my heart. They’re all wielding secrets, selfishly and to protect each other. There’s love, there’s manipulation - it’s so very obvious, they call each other out on it, but there’s no easy resolution, it’s a hard journey all the way through to see if they’ll reconcile or continue on separate paths.

This time, the engineering innovations focus on ships and submersibles. For some reason I questioned the mechanics of this more than airships (which Ying and her friends tinkered with in the guild previously), but it’s a neat direction. Leans into the steampunk, and provides Ying with plenty of opportunities for scientific testing, on the fly it’s-on-fire-but-it-works repairs, and cool visuals.

I rarely like the end of a duology more than the beginning, but this is one of the exceptions.

**Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC**