Francesca Flores

To be honest, when I saw this cover I decided to read this book. It gave me the impression of adventure, sci-fi and a girl in between. I really like how all the colors blend together. Also the left part of the diamond looks really fascinating.


The writing style was fluent and easy to read. The book was written from the view of the author, but mostly the view of Aina was focused.

In the first chapter we meet Aina as a little girl. I liked her at that moment. Thereafter, is a little time jump to a quite grown-up Aina, which is working as an assassin. It was not so easy to like her then. However, during the story I got to know her better and I loved to watch her develop and change to a better self. She had a bad childhood and prooved in the end, what can be accomplished nevertheless.
Teo was a really nice guy and it would always be great to have him as a friend. He is always there for the people, who matter to him. Further it was nice to see how he was clinging to his hopes and believes.
Ryuu was also a nice character, which I liked from the beginning. He was a good example to show, that not all Steels need to be bad or emotionless. It was really nice to also have a different view on this world. Furthermore, the relationship to his brother and their family-history was described really nice and gave a good impression, why Ryuu became, who he is.
To my shame, I was not such a big Raurie-fan. I didn't dislike her, but I also didn't got warm with her a lot.
However, I liked the big friendship which somehow - really somehow, because it just happend and I didn't see that coming - developed between this four. It was nice to see that in this brutal world, where everyone seemed quite alone.

When I started the book I was not really sure, what storyline I should expect. For sure, I read the short-plot, but I honestly had no certain expectations. For some reason - probably my cover-fantasy - I expected something like a dystopy or something with sci-fi. In some parts it was for sure dystopian, but not so much, that I would count it as dystopy. I rather see it as a story in a foreign world, which could have also played somewhere in our past. The topics vary a lot. It includes the conflicts with religion and growing industrialization. The life of a assassin vs. the idea of valueing in life.
I liked this parts in the story, where you got to think and decide for yourself, what you would do in that situation and how oneself would decide to live.

The end of the story is a little bit open and I would have really liked to read some more pages, how things turned out for Aina. Nevertheless, it was a hopefull ending.


Fazit:
Nice story, with a lot of philosophical questions, a lot of emotions and of course also some nice action-scenes - I give the book 4 out of 5 stars :)