ARC REVIEW: SKY IN THE DEEP BY ADRIENNE YOUNG

(thank you to Wednesday Books for providing me with an e-ARC of this through NetGalley!!!! it's much appreciated!!)

2.5 stars

This was underwhelming, to be honest.

Let me preface this review by saying that I think a lot of people will like this book. In fact, a lot of people havealready liked this book. It's by no means a book with no merits. For me, it wasn't a bad book so much as it was an underdeveloped one. 

More than anything, Sky in the Deep felt like the scaffolding of a much better book. The bare-bones of the story are actually pretty compelling: a warrior from a fierce clan runs into her supposedly dead brother while she's in battle. In a turn of events she finds herself living behind enemy lines, trying to reconnect with said brother—and the story goes from there. This, in addition to the mythology promised by the synopsis and that (BEAUTIFUL) cover are what initially drew me to the book. 

For all its potential, though, the story ended up falling flat. It was just very...mediocre. The characters were okay (if a little bland), but there was so little dialogue between them that their dynamics became something you were told as opposed to shown. And because of that, the meager character interactions we did get rang false; they ended up feeling like they were pressuring me into feeling emotion that I just didn't feel. That's not to say that this book's characters were emotionless. You read from Eelyn's POV for the whole book, so you do get a lot of what she's feeling. And yet, a lot of her feelings felt superficial, or at least simplistically described. More than that though, you're in her head for the whole book, yet still there wasn't a sense of true introspection to me. 

As for the world-building and plot, they were much like the characters: I could tell that there was an effort to flesh them out, to make them substantial, but still they lacked that oomph factor I wanted to see. The plot in particular I found to be very elementary. I won't go into spoilers, but I wish the author had opted for something less typical. 

Like I said before, I don't think this was a disaster of a book—it really wasn't. The characters, the world-building, the plot progression—they were all developed, but not enough. And because of that, Sky in the Deep ended up feeling like a really promising story in theory but a rather disappointing one in execution. Nonetheless, I'd still recommend trying it. If all the rest of the reviews for it are any indication, you'll probably like it.