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A review by nikereadsbooks
Ikarys the Damned by Taylor Hubbard
4.25
I received an ARC from the author and am leaving a review voluntarily.
Ikarys the Damned was a really nice first read of the year.
It was really great to watch Ikarys being the center of the story. He is an interesting character to explore, with his open hatred and devotion to different things, his strong emotions and narration that was unreliable in many places. The way he interacted with other characters, albeit I wished there were more instances of those interactions, mainly with Sabiq and the Muse, showed his character traits and his motivations so well. He was sure of his goal, sure of the Gods' failures and lies, and even though I wasn't completedly impressed by the main thing he wished for in exchange in the contract, the writing was still engaging and showed enough to make it feel like it was really something important to Ikarys. And I really liked how his trans identity was treated in the story - as in, it wasn't this overwhelming weight, but a thing that was naturally part of Ikarys. I feel like as much as we need book where being trans is a central point, we also need stories like these, where it is not in the centre of it all, but still present.
If there was one thing I really enjoyed, it was definitely the worldbuilding - the Gods and monsters, the city and how it was run, Ikarys' position and Sabiq's otherness in relation to the world, and the magic system. All of these things really made the book feel really complex, despite the fact that it wasn't a doorstopper.
And if there's one thing I am a sucker for, it's a good tragic ending. There's something so good about ending a book exactly how it should and I really think it suited ItD to end like it did. I only wished the final confrontation of the story was longer, for more conflict between Ikarys and Sabiq, or the Muse, but I overall finished the book feeling safisfied with what was written.
Ikarys the Damned was a really nice first read of the year.
It was really great to watch Ikarys being the center of the story. He is an interesting character to explore, with his open hatred and devotion to different things, his strong emotions and narration that was unreliable in many places. The way he interacted with other characters, albeit I wished there were more instances of those interactions, mainly with Sabiq and the Muse, showed his character traits and his motivations so well. He was sure of his goal, sure of the Gods' failures and lies, and even though I wasn't completedly impressed by the main thing he wished for in exchange in the contract, the writing was still engaging and showed enough to make it feel like it was really something important to Ikarys. And I really liked how his trans identity was treated in the story - as in, it wasn't this overwhelming weight, but a thing that was naturally part of Ikarys. I feel like as much as we need book where being trans is a central point, we also need stories like these, where it is not in the centre of it all, but still present.
If there was one thing I really enjoyed, it was definitely the worldbuilding - the Gods and monsters, the city and how it was run, Ikarys' position and Sabiq's otherness in relation to the world, and the magic system. All of these things really made the book feel really complex, despite the fact that it wasn't a doorstopper.