Thank you to Tor Books (via NetGalley) for providing me with this ARC in exchange for an honest review!

FIRST OF ALL – look at the blurb okay?? “This book is very close to perfect.” – Seanan McGuire AKA MY QUEEN. How could anyone NOT want to read this book based on that alone?? Okay fine, if that wasn’t enough, then this bit from the synopsis might reel you in:

“…he’s given a curious and highly classified assignment: travel to Marsyas Island Orphanage, where six dangerous children reside: a gnome, a sprite, a wyvern, an unidentifiable green blob, a were-Pomeranian, and the Antichrist.”

To me that is like the perfect cast of characters haha. And Linus himself! He’s such a softie – albeit a boring one at the onset of the book. But wow does he grow into himself! This book is truly a shining example of a character driven novel – and after reading about 20% of it, I knew it would go on my list of favorite books. It was a true joy to read, and made my heart all warm and fuzzy.

Retellings are hugely popular in young adult books these days. I love them, but I’m getting tired of the same fairytale being redone over and over. So thank goodness I finally picked up this one! This is a retelling of the longest epic poem ever, the Indian poem called The Mahabharata. I don’t know much about the original, except what I read on Wikipedia. Knowing that it’s a non-Western retelling kinda makes me love it already without reading it haha.

Another thing that intrigued me right away was that the gods and goddesses were a part of the story. I loooove that so much. It also means that since this is set in space, it is a space fantasy! Aka my favorite genre! And in my opinion, a genre we need a lot more of.

You might remember that I’ve been participating in the Pondathon, a collaborative readathon hosted by CW @ The Quiet Pond. If you don’t follow them, YOU SHOULD. There are different characters that inhabit the pond, and each of them features different sorts of things!

Anyway, one of the features of this readalong is that there are side quests you can complete. In each quest you help the different members of The Quiet Pond with various tasks. For the most recent side quest, to get a bonus reward item we were asked to make a post about a book that helped us through a hard time. I talked about an important book to me on my Twitter, but there are so many that are dear to my heart. So I thought I’d make a blog post about it as well!

I finished this book last night – well actually I read the entire thing last night since 1.) it’s a novella so it’s relatively short, and 2.) it was SO GOOD that I couldn’t put it down. However! I haven’t been able to figure out what I want to say in my review. Various things have been stewing in my head but it feels like nothing I say will be enough.

There are so many things that this novel is about. Magic – black girl magic, black anger, the experience of growing up black in America, family, racial injustice, police brutality, etc. It’s incredibly hard to summarize in one review.

More than that, it’s hard to convey how it FEELS to read this novella. The language Onyebuchi uses creates such a rich atmosphere, it really pulls you in to the story. The New York specific slang in particular, it just makes the story feel even more visceral and real. I went through so many emotions while reading, from anger to sadness to despair to hope to amazement and everything in between. And the most important part is, I know what I felt is NOTHING compared to what Black Americans feel every single day living here, but this novel helps a little bit to understand.

I feel like this review is just me rambling haha. But ultimately, my takeaway is that I think it’s an important and worthwhile read, and you should all read it.

I thought I had this series on my TBR for years but apparently this first novella was only published in 2017 lol. Well okay I guess that’s still 3 years ago! But still I thought it was longer. Anyway! I finally read the first novella today! And it was funny and enjoyable and relatable and I’m really glad I read it.

Let’s just start off with the first paragraph of the novella so you can get an idea of the tone.

“I could have become a mass murderer after I hacked my governor module, but then I realized I could access the combined feed of entertainment channels carried on the company satellites. It had been well over 35,000 hours or so since then, with still not much murdering, but probably, I don’t know, a little under 35,00 hours of movies, serials, books, plays, and music consumed. As a heartless killing machine, I was a terrible failure.”

Martha Wells, All Systems Red