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A review by isabeltavares
Little Black Bird by Anna Kirchner
4.0
3.5
TW: torture
Little Black Bird follows Wiktoria, a seventeen-year-old on her last year of school and studying to be accepted into Medical school. However, her powers get in the way of her normal life. She is telekinetic but she isn't able to control her powers and when she uses them, it hurts her. Her powers are tabu in her family and she feels it made her family not love her as they should. Or that she doesn't deserve their love. One day, she gets noticed by someone and her story begins to unravel.
It's impossible not to care about Wiktoria, Artur, and all their friends and family. Kirchner does a great job of transferring their emotions to the reader, the sadness, the loneliness, happiness, and despair. As the book ended, I felt sad at the prospect of saying goodbye to these characters. I'm looking forward to seeing them again in the sequel (please!)
However, what I loved the most was the Slavic mythology. This is a fantasy novel set around this mythology and I genuinely loved learning the stories through Wiktoria and how it influenced the plot.
The negative aspects amount to the pacing and the lack of atmosphere. The pacing was completely off with the story going very quickly. At times I felt disconnected from what was happening and I couldn't grasp the information the characters were learning. I also wish the writing could have bee more atmospheric with the city and landscape descriptions. There's a scene in a forest that had so much potential and it didn't immerse me because of the lack of atmosphere.
Regardless, there's a positive discussion about consent, especially in a relationship and sexuality. The asexuality representation had me in tears, especially with that last scene (MY HEART!) I'm so eager to read the sequel and see what is going to happen next!
TW: torture
Once upon a time, in a cursed city, three magic-users set out to summon a devil. They were lucky. The devil, for its own nefarious reasons, cared about their goal as much as they did, so it gave them a good bargain.
Their worst fears came true.
Little Black Bird follows Wiktoria, a seventeen-year-old on her last year of school and studying to be accepted into Medical school. However, her powers get in the way of her normal life. She is telekinetic but she isn't able to control her powers and when she uses them, it hurts her. Her powers are tabu in her family and she feels it made her family not love her as they should. Or that she doesn't deserve their love. One day, she gets noticed by someone and her story begins to unravel.
It's impossible not to care about Wiktoria, Artur, and all their friends and family. Kirchner does a great job of transferring their emotions to the reader, the sadness, the loneliness, happiness, and despair. As the book ended, I felt sad at the prospect of saying goodbye to these characters. I'm looking forward to seeing them again in the sequel (please!)
However, what I loved the most was the Slavic mythology. This is a fantasy novel set around this mythology and I genuinely loved learning the stories through Wiktoria and how it influenced the plot.
The negative aspects amount to the pacing and the lack of atmosphere. The pacing was completely off with the story going very quickly. At times I felt disconnected from what was happening and I couldn't grasp the information the characters were learning. I also wish the writing could have bee more atmospheric with the city and landscape descriptions. There's a scene in a forest that had so much potential and it didn't immerse me because of the lack of atmosphere.
Regardless, there's a positive discussion about consent, especially in a relationship and sexuality. The asexuality representation had me in tears, especially with that last scene (MY HEART!) I'm so eager to read the sequel and see what is going to happen next!