When I started reading this book, I wasn't sure what to expect. The book starts some time after a big world event and the lead came off a little weird to me. But I kept reading and slowly I was sucked in, caring about Sascia, Mooch and her darkmoths, her cousin Danny, her cohort from school, and Nugau. I loved this so much, I want to buy copies for all the readers in my family. For now, I'll settle for reading the rest of Kika Hatzopoulou's books.
Moth Dark follows Sascia Petrou, a young student who is in love with the Darkness that appeared in the world 6 years ago. Now 18, Sascia was supposed to be working with other students to study the dark but has taken a little more of a different route to her studies. That different route means Sascia is constantly exploring the Dark and one day Sascia sees a humanoid shape climb out of it. That turns out to be Nugau, and their mission is to kill Sascia. When Sascia finds Nugau again, Nugau doesn't know who Sascia is and things continue from there. Sascia realizes that the world inside the dark, Itkalin, is always at a different point in time from their world, and somehow Sascia is at the center of a war between humans and elves. As the two of them work to try to find a way to have their worlds be at peace together, Sascia and Nugau are drawn together again and again, caring for each other, willing to anything and everything to keep the other safe and with their worlds determined to fight, that connection might not be enough to keep them together.
So yes, when I started the book I thought Sascia was a little weird. She had a side hustle taking people "fishing" so they could capture dark insects to keep as pets. She'd had the opportunity to study at an Ivy League school but messed up with focusing enough time to study and was now taking remedial courses and retaking exams so she can get into Columbia. And she's seemingly obsessed with the Dark, apparently to the point that her expeditions leading people to fish for dark insects allow her to experience their wonder/awe/terror again and again when they first encounter Dark creatures. That's all in the opening chapter and I just thought come on kid, you know you're playing with fire. So when Nugau comes out of the manhole Sascia is working at and starts to chase her, I felt vindicated. And then thought okay, so that's how the story is going to work. Sascia is a kid who makes foolish decisions but then has to work to show why she's important, how she makes a difference, why we should root for her. To the point that not only had I started to root for her and but I wanted to shake everyone who told her that her differences were bad and that she needed to make other choices.
Nugau was a pleasant surprise and a truly wonderful character. Nugau is a genderfluid elf princet. The elves on the other side of the dark can change their gender, which is then depicted by the color of the Darkprints on their face. Nugau shows up time and time again as either gender or even intersex and it was great to see a society where this is considered the norm. It didn't matter to the character what gender they were because the essence of Nugau never changed and I loved their depiction. The strength they had as they tried to lead, as they tried to teach Sascia about the Dark, and the compassion they had in trying to save their world, it was all heartwrenching and I wanted Nugau to just be happy. I had violent feelings for their mother, and I adored their friends, Thalla and Orran.
All the characters are given their due thanks to the way the book is written. Danny, Sascia's cousin and best friend, is given the chance to shine in chapters showing their past. We get to see how they were as kids together, how they encouraged each other and partnered to explore the Dark and made discoveries that would help the world. They were exactly what they were shown to be, family, and I loved Danny's own love story with a fellow classmate. Tae, Andres, Shivani and Crow round out the rest of the cohort that are some of the best minds in the world working in a lab with Danny and Sascia to study and understand the Dark. They're each important, have unique talents and play important roles in the course of the book.
The way that the book is structured helped with highlighting the way the timeline works between Itkalin and our world. There are various chapters interspersed through the narrative, showing different past points in Sascia's life. Each highlights an important moment that has shaped Sascia into the person she is in the current timeline. I enjoyed each tidbit given and every question answered with this structure.
The magic of this world, which I think it should be called because of the wonder it invokes, and because it's the word Sascia uses, is so interesting. I loved the idea of the Dark creatures that have entered our world and how Sascia and Danny have managed to work out how to help them flourish here and help people. I loved Mooch, a Darkmoth that has chosen Sascia as their person to help through thick and thin. I loved how Sascia's choice to protect the moths helped to prove how important she was in working to resolve the conflict between the two worlds. It's all so richly detailed and a wonder to behold, just like Sascia knew it was from the start.
In the end, I loved this book. I thought it was a beautiful story about how making a better choice is possible. I'll be reading more books from Hatzopoulou as soon as possible.
Rating on my scale: 10 Stars. Really, I have no complaints about this one. Read this book if you think Pacific Rim and The Time-Traveler's Wife put together sounds like a great idea. That's the best I could come up with to compare this book to and I loved both those things. I'm sure there are other things to compare this book to but I came up with those two when I was sleep deprived and now they're the only two I can come up with. Just read this book and have beautiful day.
No comments:
Post a Comment