Well, this one had me going back and forth before writing this review. Overall, I think the premise was unique and extremely interesting. In fact, it wasn’t until the very end of the book that I completely understood the premise of exactly HOW the two locations were related. I think some more detailed world building might have helped with that, but part of my hesitation comes with the main characters.

In this book, there are 4 main characters as the story unfolds. We have Clara Birch – a Spark Maiden whom the majority of the story revolves around, and her childhood boyfriend Finn Scott, the Extraction Master’s son. During the second half of the story, we meet Jasina Bell, a Little Sister going through the Choosing and then Tyse Saarinen, a washed-out soldier who is actually an Augment. The thing is, I didn’t really like ANY of them.

Actually, that’s not true. I did like Tyse – quite a lot. But everyone else, especially Finn, well, they were just completely awful people. When I say awful, I mean it. By the end of this book, I could NOT stand Finn and Jasina wasn’t much better. Clara actually has a bit of a redemptive arc, but for most of the book she is also a clueless and entitled person who doesn’t really care about anything if it does not impact her.

So, liking the characters is a pretty important prerequisite in liking a book, so it says a lot that I still came away interested in whatever is going to happen next in this series. This book has a science fiction/fantasy storyline based in a world where there is a “god” that has an agreement with a city to run the city (think electric and city services) and requires one Spark Maiden to be volunteered up every decade. There are whole customs and societal norms revolving around this that help the citizens overlook the fact that they are giving their daughters up as a sacrifice. The problems begin when the “god” changes the plans and 9 of the Spark Maidens are called up during a single time period. Clara Birch is number 9.

The second half of the book takes place after Clara is sacrificed, and it deals with what happens to her during the “after”. Without going into spoilers, let’s just say that nothing is what it seems, and nothing was what anyone expected.

Again, the storyline itself was interesting and I was invested, but there were a couple of things that kept pulling me out of the story. One, as already stated, was the unlikability of the characters. The other was the constant degradation of women by the males in this story. The words “whore” and “slut” are used a lot, and I mean A LOT. The first couple of times it came off as somewhat of a shock, but then it started to become annoying with just how often it was thrown out towards female characters.

To top that off, there was the disjointed insertion of s*x in places that were completely inappropriate. I have absolutely no problem with s*x being a part – even a huge part- of a story. What occurs in this story is just….odd. The MMC Finn seems to all of a sudden change from a supposed nice guy to a man who cannot stop thinking about s*x, even to the point where he feels like he is OWED it on the day that his girlfriend Clara is about to be sacrificed. His internal monologue detailing what he begins to “expect” is just disturbing – and don’t get me started on his actions when it comes to the other female MC. Yeah, I don’t think that my first and only thought when I realize that the place that I am in is about to explode is to get my rocks off….and then to just fall asleep?????? See…..odd.

So, there is definitely room for improvement in the next book and I hope that we get redemptive arcs for these three characters. Honestly, I don’t think Finn can be redeemed, but I can still have hope for Clara and Jasina.