My edition: Kindle Unlimited
Pages: 353
Series: Harbinger #1
Genre: YA, Fantasy, Sci-fi
Published: June 19th, 2018
Rating: DNF @ 39%
Synopsis:
Theirs is a world of opposites. The privileged live in sky manors held aloft by a secretive magic known only as the Mysteries. Below, the earthbound poor are forced into factory work to maintain the engine of commerce. Only the wealthy can afford to learn the Mysteries, and they use their knowledge to further lock their hold on society.
Cettie Pratt is a waif doomed to the world below, until an admiral attempts to adopt her. But in her new home in the clouds, not everyone treats her as one of the family.
Sera Fitzempress is a princess born into power. She yearns to meet the orphan girl she has heard so much about, but her father deems the girl unworthy of his daughter’s curiosity.
Neither girl feels that she belongs. Each seeks to break free of imposed rules. Now, as Cettie dreams of living above and as Sera is drawn to the world below, they will follow the paths of their own choosing.
But both girls will be needed for the coming storm that threatens to overturn both their worlds.
Review:
There are many worlds. Yet we constantly separate ourselves, by degrees, from the others. We create arbitrary distinctions to set ourselves apart. But let me speak first of the two main worlds that orbit each other. There are those who live in estates and cities that have mastered the clouds and sit on their perch of air to overlook the vast landscapes below. That is the upper world. The world of the wealthy. The world of the gifted. The world where the Mysteries hold sway. The other world is darker. There are neighborhoods of extreme poverty. Winding alleys and street urchins and gangs. This is a world of fog. It is a world of coughing, sickness, and pestilence. It is a world where industry beckons the ambitious to risk their all—and where the mighty and rich descend in shame after their fortunes have been ruined by games of chance and power. These are very different worlds. And yet, they are much the same.
Cettie is of the world below. She lives in the Fells. All she knows is misery
Cettie had heard people whisper tales that the Fells had once been a thriving industrial center with happy inhabitants, but she only knew it as a smoky, crowded series of mismatched tenements—a place where everything was part prey and part predator. After the sun went down, even the officers were afraid to walk the streets.
Cettie is adopted by Fitzroy. He takes her to his estate Fog Willows. The world of Fog Willows is a complete 180 from what Cettie is used to. Cettie is used to stealing food, but now she is in a house where food is abundant. Though everything is extravagant, there is one thing that remains the same, the people.
Every scullery maid kneeling in grime dreamed of becoming a princess. Every schoolgirl with pigtails, every hungry urchin, every milliner’s daughter arranging feathers on customers’ hats, every seamstress sewing beads into corsets, every baker’s wife gripping a tray of warm buns from the oven, every coughing drudge forced to labor in the accursed cotton mills in the Fells. Every girl alive from one end of the boundless empire to the other, above and below. Except for Sera.
Sera is lonely being a princess. She doesn’t like being trapped in her house with only a governess to keep her company. Her grandfather is the emperor and he can choose his successor anytime. It doesn’t even have to be one of his sons. It could even be Sera. All the more, making Sera feel like a prisoner more than a princess.
I think if there is one thing I have taken from this book, is that no matter your class, you are a slave to your world. Now reason, why I am DNFing instead of putting it away, for now, is simple, I’m bored. I’ve read a couple reviews and some have pointed out that this book is not all the impressive until after 70%. I don’t want to have to force myself to read more than half the book to even care about the characters.
I am falling asleep and I am not attached. Books I have to force myself to read tend to get really bad reviews. I think it’s better to just pull the plug now.
The Kansan Reader 