This book is hard to rate for me because, on the one hand, I devoured it in a single day, but on the other hand, I felt that the whodunit aspect didn’t quite work for me. The marketing leans into the “Knives Out” comparison, which unfortunately gives away quite a bit before you even start reading. Personally, I found absolutely everything predictable, and nothing really surprised me, but that didn’t take away from my reading enjoyment.

As always, Àbíké-Íyímídé raises complex questions: What actually makes something art, and what gives it value? What turns someone into a genius, and how much pressure and privilege comes with that? I found all the characters fascinating and would have loved to learn way more about them. Because of the many POVs, though, they all felt a little underdeveloped, and I simply wished to know more of each of them. I understand the decision to show the perspective of all the siblings, but for me, the book would have needed to be longer in order to really dive deeper into the characters’ inner lives. Alternatively, I could also have imagined a version told entirely from Eveline’s perspective, though that would, to be fair, have changed some of the book’s core focus.

I'm still losing my mind at the absolute perfection of this series. Veronica Roth is proof that you don't need a lot of pages to create an impactful story. Every page you read has a purpose. It's truly a testament to the quality of the writing how much depth and nuance there is in the relationships between the characters. And omg the romantic couple?? The chemistry between them is just chef's kiss. They're one of my favorite book couples ever!

This is the best Czech series I’ve read so far but it’s also kind of disappointing in some aspects.

Boiii do I have things to say about it, but this is not the final book and I will be reserving my full judgement. When I first read this in 2016, I was just glad to have a good Czech sci-fi with an interesting female MC. MC who acted as a child when she should. Reading this 10 years later, I am still glad. I still like this series. A lot of thought went into the world building, and I really enjoy the setting. The inventions, customs, locations, everything feels pretty solid. I think the main concept - that there are rocks that emit frequencies which only some people can listen to and manipulate their energy- is really interesting. I honestly love the author’s writing.

I did have my moments of frustration when reading this. The biggest one is the language issue. (The only thing I know about the author is that she attended a medical school, and sometimes it’s really obvious it wasn’t linguistics) Supposedly they are all speaking English (which is explicitly said in the first book and repeated/hinted at in the others) but the author uses Czech grammar to convey people’s gender. It’s a major plot point. I think the author is just poking holes in her own world building here. Why mention the language? You could just.. not say anything and let your readers come to conclusions. Why not say they are speaking a new language? It’s a sci-fi. It’s your world. You can do whatever you want. If you translate scenes into English and they stop making sense, maybe they shouldn’t be speaking English.

I am going to be talking about the plot here, so the following paragraph may contain slight spoilers (I don’t think it does, but proceed with caution): There’s also the fact that a French guy is suddenly like “I forgot how to read French”. He remembers eventually, but let me tell you: from my experiences, you will forget how to speak a language, but it’s almost impossible to forget how to read it. Reading is a passive skill and it doesn’t require that much memory. (If you have a different experience, let me know!! :))

My other issue is the absolute lack of queer people. It could be expected honestly, but this is a series where the MC is forced to crossdress and pretend that she is a boy. She is friends with like 30+ men and you expect me to think that every single one of them is straight and loves women? Yeah, I am not gonna.

The lack of diversity there is in fact a problem. The MC travels a lot. She meet a lot of people who are all different. But somehow, every character she meets is white, or a “dark” character that has “golden” skin. Honestly, there could be characters of color for all I know, but nothing is explicitly said. There is a mention of Chinese people and it goes like : Yeah nobody speaks Chinese anymore, they are all dead. Africa is destroyed in this world. Everybody lives in Europe and surprise surprise most of them are Europeans. The MC lives with her enslaved people in Asia, but, somewhat unsurprisingly, her people are descended from Romanians.

The author studied medical school and unsurprisingly, you can see it in the writing. Honestly I would classify some scenes as body horror. All injuries were all too accurate, it was fascinating.

The characters were all terrible people, except for the MC. Kudos to the author for that. Every single person had their faults, did evil stuff and somehow I still liked some of them. A lot of them end up saying sexist remarks in front of the MC. Considering that the MC’s main fault is that she believes everything she is told, that’s really not great, though I think this is not the author’s view.

All that being said I don’t think the author is sexist (possibly just has some internalized misogyny as a lot of Czech people do), racist or homophobic, she just doesn’t think of applying more diversity in the books. I was thinking “damn, I don’t think she knows any queer people. I don’t know if she knows any non-white people” while reading some scenes… ah well.

The ending of this book was an absolute banger as usual, so even though I was cringing at some parts, I am still gonna be waiting impatiently for the final book to come out.

Conclusion: Would I read it again: absolutely Would I recommend it: yes Is it the most perfect book ever: absolutely not

(Also one of the praise for the book on the cover should count as a spoiler and it’s making me angry 😤)