A truly wonderful book full of whimsy while still retaining a grounded feeling. The writing style was beyond beautiful in a way that I doubt I could ever be able to put to words. In general the way language was used in this was fantastic. And beyond that I just fell in love with the characters, their bonds and the story. I loved reading about the bond between the sisters and the love between Rin and Esther. One good thing about stories which are short is that rings true in this case is that they end when they need to, the bad thing is that you have to say goodbye to the world and the characters earlier. Luckily I can always reread this in the future.

I do wonder How reliable Nelly’s account of everything was. I thought the characters were interesting (with few exceptions like Elisabeth but part of this is also just that she barely feels like a person or a full rounded character), but I didn’t find any of them particularly likable, which didn’t really drag the book down for me, but I could understand why it would make someone like it less. I did overall like it for the most part, although I did not care much for Catherine Linton.

And now I have finally finished it. When reading this I quickly got invested in Tané’s character and story, but although she had some decent focus in the start and a bigger one in the end there was a big part of the book where the focus was off her, so it ended up feeling more uneven and it ended up making feel like Ead and Sabran got a lot of time to be in focus while Tané faded a bit into the background. I do understand though that the focus on Ead was necessary especially in the middle and it did do a lot to make me more invested into her character, but still. Beyond that I was just very bored by Loth through most of the book, which is also dragged the book down for me. But beyond that I did really like the book.

It felt like watching a train wreck in real time, not because the characters weren’t bad people in the start (it was pretty clear they were very arrogant from the start), but because as time went on you saw them get worse while you also saw more of what they were actually like beyond Richard’s very rose tinted view of them from the start. While it was not flawless, I did get very pulled into the lives of the group and overall I did love this book.