emily’s Reviews > And the Sky Bled > Status Update

there's still not enough time spent explaining who some of these people are to each other. it's one thing for a character to gloss over their feelings when a person they have beef with gets brought up, it's something else entirely for two characters to be having a conversation filled with animosity and not to know why the hell they hate each other.

i don't mind the obliqueness when our three mains talk about the temple fire they were all present for, but i DO mind not knowing exactly what dev's hold over zain is. those are important stakes and it's hard to understand why she treats him the way she does without knowing them.

i like how there's just enough exposition to explain the world, but the POV characters aren't like, doing large asides to give backstory. i feel like i understand anastasia and charvi much less than zain and iravan but hopefully that'll come.

this is as fascinating as its blurb promised so far-- really like all 3 of the mains, and the allegory to our world's reliance on oil is well done; you'd have to be willfully obtuse not to see it, but it's also not like, dumbed-down-spelled-out. also the more i look at this cover the more i like it.