Would you trade love for peace?
Raisa of Upper Earth has only lived a life of privilege and acquiescence…
My Review
I’m not even sure how to write a coherent review on this. I am a *huge* fan of dystopia (Hunger Games is my comfort read, lol). And this book was everything I wanted in a dystopian book and yet everything was also just too real and too relatable to today’s climate and what horrors are going on in n the world. A good thing and a terrifying thing.
S.K. Ali is an author I’ve enjoyed before. I love, Love from A to Z and I have a couple of other books of hers on my TBR. I read this as part of the Ramadan Readathon! And since The Tsundoku Chronicles has never led me astray with book recs, and I was a fan of S.K. Ali (because of her rec lol) it was a no brainer to grab this and join in.
Anyway onto my attempt of a review. We follow various characters all from different backgrounds in this Dystopian society which has three different sorted areas of society of humanity and rebels of course. Except here they’re called ‘Brutes’ because what better way to squash a rebellion than to vilify those who fight against the oppression? Technology is a driving force and slowly Upper Earth (uppermost tier) is integrating the others into their system. The problem? Once they’ve locked into this technology, it guarantees their servitude.
There’s an arranged marriage between Raisa of Upper Earth to Lein of Lower Earth but she has no idea what things are like down there and she’s kidnapped before they can be reunited and married. And this is just the start of her journey. There’s also Nada and Nayf, twins with two different ideas on rebelling, Lein’s family that has been imprisoned for a good chunk of their lives, and therein’s Musaid who has loved Nada since he first saw her. We have Khalsa a record keeper because in a time where technology is more a weapon than a tool, written words are dangerous, and Eyas, a child who has lived through too much in her small lifetime.
There are so many more characters but I would say a lot of focus is given to most of those I’ve listed above. The pacing is great, she does a superb job of world building and this had so ma y parallels or commonalities in tiny ways with my favorite dystopia elements and books that it made my cold little heart so happy. I think some might find the pacing slow but this is a book that is building up until you’re unable to put it down as it smashes your heat and throws you toward the end.
The characters are great, even the horrible ones, they’re so well fleshed out and all given such depth that I didn’t ever dread having a different character chapter. I loved them all.
Only to leave you wanting more. Luckily this is a duology, unluckily we have to wait for the second to release.
I’ll be frank it’s easy to draw the parallels between this and what is happening in Palestine. So again it’s dystopia but so relatable to these times now that I think it made it a much more effective read in this climate. I also greatly enjoyed discussing this book with the read along group and we went so much more in depth, there’s so much nuance and background work; so many little details that boggle the mind. And I love it.
Reads like this are important, Dystopian reads, books so easily set up to be labeled as banned, these books are the ones that should be getting the spotlight. I loved this book, you can tell by this loose cannon of a review and I hope that something I’ve said has made you intrigued enough to look at it or pick it up.
5/5 HUGE cups of coffee from me, it’s gone on my favorites shelf and I look forward to book 2.
The Caffeinated Reader 
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