A review by ohmage_resistance
Deathless Divide by Justina Ireland

adventurous dark tense medium-paced
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
This book was a good follow up to book 1 in the series, although it goes in a different direction. I enjoyed having Katherine as a MC, and her and Jane's friendship was my favorite part of the book
especially since it's not often a YA book will end with two girls, as friends, going off on an adventure with one another, instead of having a love interest. The lack of amatonormativity was nice
. I also want to give the audiobook narrators a shout out, they were great at giving the MCs a little bit extra personality/making some of the humor hit.

This book is also pretty dark at times, especially for YA, although things aren't completely hopeless
Poor Jane just has no luck. I'll also note that it was really odd to read a book where the main villain was evil for recklessly developing a vaccine that came out in 2020. I know that it was pulling more from the experiences of Black Americans being used for medical experiments rather than modern vaccine commentary, but it was still a little jarring
. I think the experiences of Black Americans in this slightly after the Civil war era time were well portrayed in this book as far as I can tell, but I'm less sure about other minority racial groups.

Over all, I had a pretty good time.
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