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Sky in the Deep by Adrienne Young | Review | YA Historical Fantasy

I received this book for free from the mentioned source in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book nor the content of my review.



Sky in the Deep by Adrienne Young | Review | YA Historical FantasySky in the Deep by Adrienne Young
Published by: Wednesday Books on April 24, 2018
Genres: YA, Fantasy, Historical, Vikings
Pages: 340
Format: eARC
Source: NetGalley

View on: Goodreads
Grab it: Amazon

Review Score:
About the Book:

OND ELDR. BREATHE FIRE.

Raised to be a warrior, seventeen-year-old Eelyn fights alongside her Aska clansmen in an ancient rivalry against the Riki clan. Her life is brutal but simple: fight and survive. Until the day she sees the impossible on the battlefield — her brother, fighting with the enemy — the brother she watched die five years ago.

Faced with her brother's betrayal, she must survive the winter in the mountains with the Riki, in a village where every neighbor is an enemy, every battle scar possibly one she delivered. But when the Riki village is raided by a ruthless clan thought to be a legend, Eelyn is even more desperate to get back to her beloved family.

She is given no choice but to trust Fiske, her brother’s friend, who sees her as a threat. They must do the impossible: unite the clans to fight together, or risk being slaughtered one by one. Driven by a love for her clan and her growing love for Fiske, Eelyn must confront her own definition of loyalty and family while daring to put her faith in the people she’s spent her life hating.

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A YA novel about vikings?  Sign me up!  Sky in the Deep is the debut from author Adrienne Young, and if you’re into vikings, strong heroines, or both, I would suggest picking this one up, although I would say be prepared for less action than what is advertised.

The Aska and the Riki clans have been at war for as long as anyone can remember.  Every year during the fighting season, the two groups meet just so they can fight.  Five years ago, Eelyn lost her brother during a battle against the Riki.  So why does she see him fighting with the Riki this year?  When she is captured by the Riki, Eelyn must find a way to survive and get back to her father, the only family she has left.  But when the Riki are attacked by another clan, the Aska and the Riki must come together, or it’s possible none of them will survive.

I want to start out by saying I legitimately did enjoy this book.  However, I don’t like how it was marketed.  The entire plot is in the books description, which I always hate. If something is brought up in the description on the back of the book, I want it to happen fairly early on.  That was not the case with Sky in the Deep.  The attack on the Riki from the clan that everyone thinks is a legend doesn’t happen until about halfway through the book.  The first half was more of a slice of life novel in the Riki village where Ellyn starts to realize the Riki and the Aska really aren’t that different.  Personally, I love slice of life types of stories and I really enjoyed that bit of the story, but I was left feeling disappointed because I was expecting so much more action than there actually was.

My other really big complaint comes from Herja, the legendary clan that attacks the Riki halfway through the book.  Because the book description said that everyone thought they were just a legend, I thought there was going to be a supernatural element to them.  I was pretty disappointed to discover they were just another clan.  There were more of them, and they were bigger and scarier, but they were just regular vikings.  It could be that I just misinterpreted the description of them, but it was still a bummer.

For what it was though, I did really like the story.  Eelyn is a strong heroine who loves her family and the rest of her clan.  She spends a lot of the book torn between being relieved that her brother, Iri, is actually alive and angry because he left their clan to live with the enemy.  As she lives with the Riki and sees them doing the same things she would be doing with her family back at the Aska village, she starts to see that the Riki and the Aska really aren’t that different.  The romance between her and Fiske is something that doesn’t happen until much later in the book, and I honestly could have done without it, but I liked them both as separate characters.

Overall, I would give Sky in the Deep 3 out of 5.  It wasn’t what I was expecting based on the book’s description, but I still enjoyed it.  I would have given it a higher rating had it been blurbed differently, but it’s still worth picking up.

 

 

My Rating

New Rate 3.0 Controllers-min

 

Ariel New Sig 2-min