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taryn_g's review against another edition
adventurous
hopeful
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Blood, and Murder
rinku's review
adventurous
hopeful
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.0
If it wasn’t for the characters that I fell in love with in the first book, I probably would’ve given Beyond the End of the World only two stars. Reasons for this are the quite cliché and sometimes irritating plot and the not totally satisfying ending.
North is stuck in Nimh’s land, while Nimh is now in North’s land above. She lost all of her memories which leads to Inshara, whose in the land above as well, pretending to be her and gaining the trust of the queen. Nimh tries to find a way to gain back her memories while North tries to find a way to save her. I wasn’t the biggest fan of the fact that they parted ways since what made the story great for me before was the dynamic between them.
The rest of the story is spend with our main characters searching for some MacGuffin and forming alliances for the final battle but I still struggled remembering which group had which interests in the first place. What bothered me as well was the fact that our main characters barely have any success throughout the novel and just experience misfortune after misfortune. Compared to this was one great surprising moment when the land of above falling down on the land below .
But my main problem with the story is that it just included too many ideas that have often been used in Fantasy YA before, like random prophecies or this twist that I strongly dislike where some characters are suddenly related to each other. Here, it was the case with Inshara and North being half-siblings. Another problem I had with this plotline was the implication that Inshara only turned out the way she is because her father was absent, this feels a bit monocausal . There are many twists after this which just got tiring and didn’t make me care much. The only twist I enjoyed was the one that the people of both worlds originated from Earth . Sadly, this idea is not further utilized.
The ending wasn’t my favorite as well; this opening the door for the villain thing was a bit cliché and in general, I didn’t fully understand what was happening because some of the explanations throughout the whole novel didn’t make sense. This maybe can be traced back to my general problem that the writing made it a bit hard for me to visualize things.
I don’t have much to say about the characters, besides having to admit that the bindle cat was probably one of my favorites this novel lmao. Nimh and North are a cute couple, and it was a really nice moment when Nimh met North’s friends for the first time. Sadly, there were some characters I had issues, like Inshara being just not believable at all since her motivations were kinda weak.
After all of this, I probably would still recommend the The Other Side of the Sky series. The world building, especially in the first novel, is so creative and it was just fun to see the differences between the two worlds. The characters are great too, but the plot is were the series is lacking. That’s sad since there was so much potential for an interesting story with this great world. Instead, we get a story with predictable plot twists and a somehow shallow conflict.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Blood and Death
Moderate: War and Violence
beautifulpaxielreads's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
hopeful
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Gaslighting, Injury/Injury detail, Murder, Violence, Death, Emotional abuse, and Blood
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