Surprisingly good! As somebody who didnât like Ninth House/Locked Tomb, Iâm currently expecting to not like any of the queer/lesbian YA, the more TikTok-viable the blurb, the worse. This one at least isnât Lesbian Necromancers In Space, but I saw it as âsapphic dark academia Jekyll/Hydeâ, and even though itâs not not that, I enjoyed it much more than I thought.
It has way more angsting about irrelevant stuff while there could be angsting about actual problems, but thatâs just YA not landing with me being an increasingly old fart. I did think the angsting was realistic and well-written, and while there were too many hints at the actual mysteryâs solutions, the book does well to focus on characters more than mystery, and it did the atmosphere very well.
Just to compare: Iâm reviewing this a year after I read it, and while I had zero memory of the highly rated and lauded âShadow of What Was Lostâ, I can still easily recall this bookâs Tower, and setting, and even some of the plot.
This book is part of the 2022 Backlog Incident.
