A review by aimeenotpond
And the Sky Bled by S. Hati

Did not finish book. Stopped at 33%.

NetGalley ARC Review:

The new-adult, cli-fi novel And The Sky Bled, from author S. Hati, is not a bad debut. Unfortunately, it’s one I didn’t feel inclined to finish. 

The book’s opening chapters are rushed, full of heavy-handed exposition that is devoid of emotive detail. Emotionally sparse world-building could be used throughout to convey the characters’ desensitisation - but, at this point, we don’t know Hati’s characters well enough for that to work. Instead, an onslaught of geopolitics and side-characters’ names ironically make the world feel too large all at once, disengaging the reader early on. 

This sort of pacing feels like it should fit a YA audience but imagery like that of the fleshy gash in the sky is too gory for that. Similarly, that central image wasn’t executed as well as it could have been: Hati seems to treat it as another part of the world she needs to explain rather than use. It is mentioned, then left in the story, in the same way that the politics of Tejomaya’s colonialism are: quickly, obviously, shallowly. 

Of the three main characters, despite being saddled with confusing political jargon, Anastasia’s chapters were by far the most entertaining to read. She was the most unpredictable, where Zain fell flat and Iravan acted too immaturely. Still, Hati’s tendency to ‘tell’ the audience about her characters rather than show them makes them less sympathetic: too often it took me out of the story to read such redundant and unrealistic conversations.

In general, the lack of impactful world-building felt like smog from the fire which blankets the plot. I kept reading, looking for more - more intricate characterisation, more ideas about the world’s layout, or how its bleeding sky came to be. 

But the smog remains, choking the world and the characters alike.