Reviews tagging 'Fire/Fire injury'

The Other Side of the Sky by Meagan Spooner, Amie Kaufman

1 review

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adventurous dark 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

3.5

 At first, I believed that I would give The Other Side of the Sky five stars. I loved the beginning so much, how it introduced us to the very interesting world and how dramatic the plot was from the beginning. Sadly, this rating dropped as soon as the romance and a random villain were introduced, so I could give only 3.5 stars in the end. 

Right at the beginning, I was intrigued by both worlds and the protagonists presented to us: One of the worlds is a more fantasy themed world where Nimh lives. Nimh was chosen to be the new goddess but there are two conflicts around this: First, her people start to no longer believe in her godliness since she hasn’t shown any special powers. Second, there’s some kind of deadly mist spreading. Both conflicts are introduced right at the beginning, giving the story first a fast pace. I especially found it interesting to see how Nimh navigated her position, and I liked the small court drama happening. 

Our other protagonist, North, lives with his people in the sky in a sci-fi themed world. Their problem is that the island they’re living on are losing their height and that North is not happy with the restrictions his position as a prince brings.  I loved this whole set-up with two worlds that don’t know of each other, and I liked the contrast between fantasy and science-fiction. 

The plot starts to pick up its pace when North crashes down. Sadly, it significantly slows down around the half and everything became less enjoyable for me in general. Like I’ve said, I didn’t like the fact that Nimh and North fell so fast in love. What I especially had an issue with was the villain since they just appear out of nowhere. What also annoyed me towards the end with its many reveals that
almost every character lied about their identity/had a secret identity: Inshara is the daughter of the former goddess, Elkisa is a traitor, Techetur (my notes are barely readable so I’m not sure if this is his name lmao) is not a traitor, and Nimh is the light bringer which leads to her character changing so much. In my eyes, the authors tried too hard to implement as many shocking twists as possible, but it just became tiring and not shocking at all after a while
. Just in general, it got so predictable towards the end with
North getting captured by the evil guys to force Nimh to do something. I’m pretty sure that even in the text, it was hinted at that something like that would happen
. It obviously has to end with a cliff hanger as well where
only Nimh and Inshara get ported to the sky
. 

I’m not fully sure what to think about the writing. On the one side, the settings were described so vividly and were just atmospheric. On the other side, there was a bit too much telling, especially when the world was introduced. Of course, it’s hard to introduce the readers to a new world without telling, but it was simply too much for me. I noticed this as well with the characterisation of Inshara; all the characters say that she’s so charismatic, but we never see this on the page. 

Most of the things that I could say about the characters were already said above, but I can add two small notes: I really, really loved the street cat as a sidekick for Nimh and I also liked the fact that North has two moms and is poly if I interpreted it correctly. 

The Other Side of the Sky was not able to fulfil its potential fully but I’m still curious how the story will continue – and end. 
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