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A review by divine529
City of Islands by Kali Wallace
This was such a quick and fun read, but it ended up being a lot darker than I was expecting.
This book follows our main character Mara, who lives in a world made up of islands (an archipelago honestly) and is a diver who retrieves artifacts from the ocean floor and delivers them to a master. This world had an ancient society who has now been lost, so they're trying to find relics from that time. Mara ends up gaining favor with the master and sent on a quest under the sea and what she gets is a lot more than she bargained for.
The writing of this book was pretty well done. It was a fast-paced book, flowed nicely and was just fine in general. You know by now, I tend not to pay too much attention to writing when I read, except in very specific cases.
The plot was very interesting, it took all kinds of interesting twists and turns (most of which I saw coming overall, but still fun regardless) and was fast moving and kept you wanting to know what was going to happen next. This book had a bit of a mystery aspect to it, but it was also fairly dark and had themes of death, experimentation and the like in it.
The world building was great. I would honestly read an entire book about this world because I really enjoyed it. As I mentioned earlier, this world is a whole culture based on different islands. There was also the whole history of this ancient culture that we're trying to find out and how it all ties together. The magic system in this was primarily done through songs and language which I really enjoyed. I can be picky with music magic, but I thought it was done really well here. Also just the every day lives of the people who lived here was lovely to see. Honestly I wish we got to spend more time exploring the world because I think we only got a smattering of what it could be. I hope the author writes more in this world someday, even though the story wrapped up nicely in the end, I felt like there was more to explore.
Finally, the characters. I'm not going to go into too much depth about them because their interactions and personalities are what drove the story, but I loved Mara as our main character - she's so inquisitive and determined and ambitious (she's quite Slytherin-like if you ask me) and I just loved getting to see her adventures and how she gets in and out of different situations. I loved the friendships we got to see as well. The main one between Mara and Izzy was great and I honestly loved their dynamic a whole lot. Another was the relationship between Mara and Fish Hook. I loved them a lot as well. Overall the relationships and interactions between the characters was well done.
Overall, I really enjoyed this; the plot and writing we well done and made me want to keep reading, the world building was lovely and I wanted more of it because I felt like it wasn't enough and the characters and all of their interactions were lovely to read about. I'd definitely recommend giving this one a read if you haven't already.
This book follows our main character Mara, who lives in a world made up of islands (an archipelago honestly) and is a diver who retrieves artifacts from the ocean floor and delivers them to a master. This world had an ancient society who has now been lost, so they're trying to find relics from that time. Mara ends up gaining favor with the master and sent on a quest under the sea and what she gets is a lot more than she bargained for.
The writing of this book was pretty well done. It was a fast-paced book, flowed nicely and was just fine in general. You know by now, I tend not to pay too much attention to writing when I read, except in very specific cases.
The plot was very interesting, it took all kinds of interesting twists and turns (most of which I saw coming overall, but still fun regardless) and was fast moving and kept you wanting to know what was going to happen next. This book had a bit of a mystery aspect to it, but it was also fairly dark and had themes of death, experimentation and the like in it.
The world building was great. I would honestly read an entire book about this world because I really enjoyed it. As I mentioned earlier, this world is a whole culture based on different islands. There was also the whole history of this ancient culture that we're trying to find out and how it all ties together. The magic system in this was primarily done through songs and language which I really enjoyed. I can be picky with music magic, but I thought it was done really well here. Also just the every day lives of the people who lived here was lovely to see. Honestly I wish we got to spend more time exploring the world because I think we only got a smattering of what it could be. I hope the author writes more in this world someday, even though the story wrapped up nicely in the end, I felt like there was more to explore.
Finally, the characters. I'm not going to go into too much depth about them because their interactions and personalities are what drove the story, but I loved Mara as our main character - she's so inquisitive and determined and ambitious (she's quite Slytherin-like if you ask me) and I just loved getting to see her adventures and how she gets in and out of different situations. I loved the friendships we got to see as well. The main one between Mara and Izzy was great and I honestly loved their dynamic a whole lot. Another was the relationship between Mara and Fish Hook. I loved them a lot as well. Overall the relationships and interactions between the characters was well done.
Overall, I really enjoyed this; the plot and writing we well done and made me want to keep reading, the world building was lovely and I wanted more of it because I felt like it wasn't enough and the characters and all of their interactions were lovely to read about. I'd definitely recommend giving this one a read if you haven't already.