This is a very weird one for me. I generally vibe with Diana Wynne Jones, but this book? I don’t know, it was fine but I constantly felt like I should hold onto lore in preparation for the other two books in the series, and somehow integrate this one with the previous book, but … I didn’t know how, and the lore ended up feeling very un-sticky.
The general story (aristocratic girl and idiot idealist revolutionary boy flee together) is alright, but the required “everybody is an annoying teenager phase” is something that I’m maybe just over, so it didn’t work all too well for me, either.
This book is part of the 2022 Backlog Incident.
