Aubree Cohan’s Reviews > Above > Status Update

I love the emphasis on culture in this book:

“It wasn’t like I hadn’t known who he was. He had always defended every aspect of the core family values he had been raised on,
though he never stated he believed in the idea of mistakes among shaytan and purity determining worth.”

The way you can dismiss a whole group of people merely b/c you were raised that way will always astonish me.

There’s also this part of me that realizes time and time again how much people follow blind hate that they don’t even understand. So many follow others points of views with no questions, because they simply don’t think for themselves to ever know the truth.

The way they are at war is heavily reflected in how those at war just say yes without taking the costs into deeper empathy and consideration . There’s so much “yessir” going on and not enough “no sir” and you can’t tell me that they aren’t aware of the cost, they’re just too afraid to oppose it and feel unsafe doing the right thing.

I love analyzing how much Altair loves fucking with Nova . He does it out of feeling like he has to, to some degree, but really I think it’s play for him . He wants the power he can’t have over his father and he doesn’t want anyone to see the way he feels towards nova, even though he would deny that flat out . He’s drawn to her with hate in his heart, but it’s how he can be close to her too.