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A review by ketreads
The Final Strife by Saara El-Arifi
dark
hopeful
mysterious
medium-paced
5.0
This is a book I've heard very little about before finding it for Storygraph Reads the World and found my local library had the audiobook to put on hold.
I don't know what I expected but this book was fantastic! I'm not the biggest fan of YA but not only is El-Arifi's characters enjoyable to follow, her world building, and the mystery surrounding the blood colours was marvelous. If you know anything about my reading habits, you'd know I LOVE a good world building mystery and this one had multiple going for it.
The main storyline initially seems pretty simple. The people in power are using their vast resources to further the gap between them and those weakest. Something must be done to change this. Enter stage left: Sylah. Dispite this, the author managed to make me question every twist and turn in the narrative. As soon as I felt confident I knew how this was going, El-Arifi would reveal a new piece of the puzzle that made us reinterprate the whole story so far. I loved the way this was done, and often found myself eating my own words at my initial dislike of the twist.
I loved our flawed yet good girl, Sylah but I ADORED Anoor. How the author chose to introduce this character and build upon our preconceptions, especially through the use of changing PoVs to recontextulise a scene, was fantastic. I literally have to hold myself back from borrowing book 2 as I have so many books I need to read. BUT I am 100% continuing with this series.
I don't know what I expected but this book was fantastic! I'm not the biggest fan of YA but not only is El-Arifi's characters enjoyable to follow, her world building, and the mystery surrounding the blood colours was marvelous. If you know anything about my reading habits, you'd know I LOVE a good world building mystery and this one had multiple going for it.
The main storyline initially seems pretty simple. The people in power are using their vast resources to further the gap between them and those weakest. Something must be done to change this. Enter stage left: Sylah. Dispite this, the author managed to make me question every twist and turn in the narrative. As soon as I felt confident I knew how this was going, El-Arifi would reveal a new piece of the puzzle that made us reinterprate the whole story so far. I loved the way this was done, and often found myself eating my own words at my initial dislike of the twist.
I loved our flawed yet good girl, Sylah but I ADORED Anoor. How the author chose to introduce this character and build upon our preconceptions, especially through the use of changing PoVs to recontextulise a scene, was fantastic. I literally have to hold myself back from borrowing book 2 as I have so many books I need to read. BUT I am 100% continuing with this series.