A review by mesal
Assassin of Reality by Marina Dyachenko, Sergey Dyachenko

4.0

I am constantly amazed by the Dyachenkos' ability to write open-ended conclusions to their novels that somehow allow them to work as standalones at the same time as leaving questions open for sequels to answer. Although Vita Nostra gave readers no dearth of information when it came to understanding the premise of Assassin of Reality, somehow a lot of the first half of this novel still flew right over my head, making me take much longer to get through it than I did its predecessor. The second half made much more sense and brought narrative threads together well; there may have been far more oddly poetic sentences mixed in with the usual writing style carried forward from Vita Nostra, but it was overall a compelling read.

The acknowledgements section was a bittersweet close to the novel. Serhiy Dyachenko died during the process of Assassin of Reality's translation into English; the third and final installment of this trilogy will be written by Maryna without him. I look forward to reading its translation whenever it's published and discovering

the macrostructure Sasha creates in her own image—and how much of a place Farit Kozhennikov has in it. If he has one at all

.