Book: Sky In The Deep by Adrienne Young

Published April 2018 by Wednesday Books|340 pages

Where I Got It: I borrowed the hardcover from the library

Series: None

Genre: YA Fantasy

OND ELDR. BREATHE FIRE.

Raised to be a warrior, seventeen-year-old Eelyn fights alongside her Aska clansmen in an ancient rivalry against the Riki clan. Her life is brutal but simple: fight and survive. Until the day she sees the impossible on the battlefield — her brother, fighting with the enemy — the brother she watched die five years ago.

Faced with her brother’s betrayal, she must survive the winter in the mountains with the Riki, in a village where every neighbor is an enemy, every battle scar possibly one she delivered. But when the Riki village is raided by a ruthless clan thought to be a legend, Eelyn is even more desperate to get back to her beloved family.

She is given no choice but to trust Fiske, her brother’s friend, who sees her as a threat. They must do the impossible: unite the clans to fight together, or risk being slaughtered one by one. Driven by a love for her clan and her growing love for Fiske, Eelyn must confront her own definition of loyalty and family while daring to put her faith in the people she’s spent her life hating.

I wasn’t sure about Sky In The Deep at first, but I’m glad I picked it up.  I ended up liking it more than I thought I would.

Something about the setting made me think of both Norse mythology and Iceland.  I’m not sure why, but it did.  I liked the setting, and the world is one that felt both familiar and different, in a good way.  I got a really good sense of the world that Eelyn lives in, and of course, I initially assumed it was the first book in a series.  Before realizing it was a stand alone, of course.  I’m always nervous about stand alone fantasy novels, because I’m never sure if the world will be explained well enough.  It was, though, and while you have the rival clans that band together to defeat a bigger rival, it worked really for both clans.

I think I did expect more than two clans who have quite a few different villages between them, but I think any more would have made things more complicated, so two worked out really well for this book.  There was distrust, of course- and that was set aside.  I think at least one more book could have expanded on the rivalry and the different relationships between the characters, but overall, I thought it was pretty good for just the one book.

There were some terms that popped up that I wasn’t sure of- I flipped to the back expecting a glossary, but there wasn’t one.  I was able to get the idea from the way other characters acted, so it wasn’t a huge deal.  And it is a stand alone, so in the end, it wasn’t that surprising.  It is on the short side, and I think maybe adding a little more to it might have helped.

I thought things were resolved pretty well, though some things were glossed over to get that resolution.  Again, not surprising, but that’s what I get for randomly deciding that I’m going to read a book without paying attention to what they’re about and if they’re part of a series.

I’m not really sure what else to say, so I think it’s time to move onto my rating of Sky In The Deep!

4 stars.  I really enjoyed Sky In The Deep, but I do wish it had been a little bit longer.