The Girl and the Stars (Book of the Ice, #1)

by Mark Lawrence

[HekArtemis]

I don't know if this is meant to be YA or almost YA or not, but it certainly had a YA feel to it. Certain elements and tropes were just very YAish. Which is fine, but I am not in the right mood for those elements and so a 5 star book didn't give me 5 star enjoyment. This to say, there is nothing wrong with this book, it is a fantastic 5 star book - I just wasn't in the right mood for certain aspects of it, and so I didn't enjoy it as much as it deserved.

When I read BoA I had assumed that Abeth is another planet that humans had travelled to some time in the distant future/past. Someone the other month noted that it was entirely possible that Abeth is actually Earth, aka the Broken Empire, way in the future and the characters of BoA are actually aliens who travelled to Earth in the future/past. And I was left confused and uncertain. This book did not help to clarify things. On the one hand it mentions a certain crossover thingy as having arrived on Abeth, a thing that was certainly from Earth originally, suggesting that Abeth is not Earth. But then some of the myth talk is very Earth, like mention of Jonah and the whale. And while myths could travel from Earth to another planet, of course, in this case it seems to have come from one of the people who weren't from the ships way back. So... no resolution. Sigh.

I am also left confused about those 4 tribes, whether alien or Terran. The Marjals, Hunstas, Gerants, and Quantals. I had assumed that these were literal biological races with biological traits that pass from one generation to the next. But in this book it seems like they just randomly pop up unexpectedly in various families. Like Yaz is a Quantal and her brother is Hunsta or whatever the fast ones are, but their parents are none of the four? How does this work? I don't know, it's weird anyway.

I look forward to the next book. Especially with that cliffhanging ending.