I had a genuine “oh shit” moment when I read the author’s preface saying this was darker than “Winter Harvest” because – and I absolutely ADORED “Winter Harvest” – that was pitch-black dark. I thought “we’re all going to die”.
This maybe has something to do with my expectations, and it’s a confirmation I should never read prefaces. The book isn’t dark. Not by a long shot. I think it’s afraid to be, and this might explain the long list of trigger-warnings for stuff that sometimes it’s only half-mentioned or, when it happens, it isn’t half as terrifying as it’s pictured to be.
Talking of expectations, I also hoped to see more mythology in this, and I know the author said it wouldn’t be so, but I kept hoping for the main character’s name to have something to do with the Mother of Centaurs. And it didn’t.
The general idea of a story playing between the mythological persona and the actual character is nice enough, but the tension shifts too often through gratuitous foreshadowing. Definitely not my cup of tea. Let’s hope we’ll have a third book soon, and one that’s less fearful of diving heads and tails into the darker shades of mythology, as we know Ioanna is able to do.
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