Reviews

The Girl who Loved the Whales by Marc Secchia

historyoftape's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

This book reads a lot more fluidly than the first in the series. It has a bigger focus on character development and the relationships of its characters.
I particularly like Zhisu trying to figure out her relationship to her estranged dad
. 
It reads as a lovesong to Belief, whether that be in love, or in pain, or anything in between. The juxtaposition of
Zhisu and Chime
is especially poignant, in how different they start out and how more and more, they begin to try to understand each other and push each other into a future neither of them could have seen coming.
My gripes with this book all kind of come down to one person:
Zhisu
. Whie she does develop a lot over the course of the book, and her overdriven mind is one of the main reasons she survives in the first place, the constant overthinking gets a bit exhausting. Especially
how she keeps assuming she knows what Chime is thinking and is so, so far off the mark, so many times!!
You'd think she'd learn... Her other flaw is jut being a bit too overpowered. They do use strategy & planning to deal with many battles, but
oftentimes the battles are always won when zhisu unlocks her magic and can suddenly just be naturally good at skills she'd never even considered before
. Save for those gripes I still found this a captivating story, with incredible worldbuilding, so many different backdrops & scenery, charscter development in many acts, and so many twists & turns I never could have seen coming. 
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