Reading these bits felt a lot like going around in endless circles. It did more telling than showing, explaining ideas and situations rather than dramatizing them through effective use of dialogue and the characters’ unvoiced thoughts. Unnecessary exposition, of which there were many, also didn’t help even out this story’s pace. However, with the hefty amounts of information needed to be unloaded, worldbuilding took up most of the book’s first half and slowed down the pace significantly. It was an intriguing and complex world brought to life by meticulous detail work. Ziran, the desert city where the story takes place, is a vast place teeming with peoples from different Zirani territories and allied kingdoms. Taking inspiration from West African folklore, she transports readers to a world of elemental gods and goddesses, powerful beings, and ancient magic. Brown took care to lay down her story’s world.
There are others, still, that go the opposite direction, gathering its bearings and doling out its bits and pieces before finally coalescing into something more solid.Ī Song of Wraiths and Ruinis firmly in the second category, something that both works for and against it.ĭebut author Roseanne A. Some stories start on a breakneck pace, hitting the ground running and taking off immediately right from page one. But as attraction flares between them and ancient evils stir, will they be able to see their tasks to the death?
When Malik rigs his way into the contest, they are set on a course to destroy each other. And she knows just how to obtain one: by offering her hand in marriage to the victor of the Solstasia competition. Grief-stricken, Karina decides to resurrect her mother through ancient magic… requiring the beating heart of a king. Her mother, the Sultana, has bee assassinated her court threatens mutiny and Solstasia looms like a knife over her neck.
But when a vengeful spirit abducts Malik’s younger sister, Nadia, as payment into the cit, Malik strikes a fatal deal – kill Karina, Crown Princess of Ziran, for Nadia’s freedom.īut Karina has deadly aspirations of her own. All opinions expressed in this review are my own.ĭestiny, magic, trickster deities, and vengeful spirits bring two young people on a collision course that’ll upend both their lives and the world as they know it in this debut YA Fantasy inspired by West African folklore.įor Malik, the Solstasia festival is a chance to escape his war-stricken home and start a new life with his sisters in the prosperous desert city of Ziran. Get it: IndieBound | Book Depository | Barnes and Noble | Books-a-Million | Amazon | Kobo | Apple BooksĪRC provided by the publisher through NetGalley. Content warning: Anxiety, chronic pain, child abuse ( implied)
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