Reviews - The Sapling Cage

814 reviews for:

I love this book. It does not exceed my favorite book from Margaret Killjoy (A Country of Ghosts - one of my favorite books ever) but I bet the series will once its finished. The style and substance she imbues into all her work feels so dang refreshing, to the point I audibly hiss "yess" every chapter or two.

I'm completely engrossed in this world and can't wait for the sequels. The world is so interesting and surprisingly fleshed out with not a lot of pages, accompanying a breakneck-speed plot that I almost always enjoy. When the current plot isn't hitting, never fear - just flip the page and onto the next! To me this is not a dig at all, it's fun. I LOVE some of the characters, and am looking forward to getting to know others more in the sequels.

It feels like a bit of a genre-defying mix of YA and, dark fantasy maybe? There are tone shifts between Lorel's self-exploration/coming-of-age and the sometimes horrible events of the world, darker in tone than most other YA I'd reckon. But for me it absolutely works, and the shifts are not so big.

The politics of the world and how it intertwines with the intimate lives of the characters and their viewpoints is so interesting. Again, covering a lot of ground with a relatively short book. And the parallels with our world make for some fascinating stick-in-your-brain discussion points. It all feels fully in the lineage of the best radical sci-fi/fantasy writers e.g. Ursula Le Guin.

There are some plot moments that felt a little messy or out of step with character motivations/ability, but I never really minded, having bought into the YA aspect.

I would give it 4.5/5 but I'm rounding to 5 with the aim of pointing more people towards Margaret Killjoy's work.

acciogo's review

4.5

adventurous emotional funny hopeful mysterious fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

susannecollins's review

3.0

Oh man I reaaaaallly wanted to love this one. A trans witch? Yes please. Margaret Killjoy seems cool as hell. But this one just didn’t do it for me. The world was interesting but the writing itself seemed surface level and disjointed. The big moments had the same weight as the small moments. There was a lot of walking from one place to another so I was never quite sure where we were any given moment. The plot was hard to follow and it was extremely hard to tell the many characters apart especially the elder witches. I’d love to read about this character and world and have it be more fleshed out with deeper emotional beats. I will tune in for the next book to see if there is more weight there but I’ll have to DNF if not.

standard_disk's review

4.0

adventurous funny hopeful tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

bzedan's review against another edition

4.75

adventurous hopeful mysterious fast-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: Complicated

Such a fun and adventurous book, with just the right balance of hope and horror. It’s a spiritual successor of Tamora Pierce’s Circle books, with all the same story satisfaction.