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A review by egelantier
A Daughter of No Nation by A.M. Dellamonica
4.0
a sequel to the child of a hidden sea that paradoxically profits from the profoundly lowered stakes. sophie hansa gets back to the world of stormwrack, but instead of the international intrigure of the previous book the main conflict revolves around her fraught relationship with her birth father. he’s charismatic, larger-than-life, determined like hell, impressive like whoa, very devoted to sophie and very into the idea of reclaiming their familial relationship… and not so simple. there’s a beautifully simple and strong conflict in the middle of the book, and i loved how it fell out (and didn’t finish, yet).
i love dellamonica’s worldbuilding - beautifully unrestrained in the way martha wells’ is, sprawling, brave and inventive - but my main incentive for reading these books is sophie, who’s a stunningly relatable portal fantasy heroine, curious and headstrong and awkward, neither adapting to the weirdness of the other world too easily nor fighting the obvious; she’s one of the best waypoint characters for this kind of thing i’ve ever read, and i would be happy to follow her for many more installments.
i love dellamonica’s worldbuilding - beautifully unrestrained in the way martha wells’ is, sprawling, brave and inventive - but my main incentive for reading these books is sophie, who’s a stunningly relatable portal fantasy heroine, curious and headstrong and awkward, neither adapting to the weirdness of the other world too easily nor fighting the obvious; she’s one of the best waypoint characters for this kind of thing i’ve ever read, and i would be happy to follow her for many more installments.