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Dominic
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rated it 5 stars
Apr 26, 2016 12:16AM
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A magical, suspenseful, brutal and yet beautiful end to the Vagabond Circus series. This book takes you on an emotional rollercoaster, it breaks your heart, puts it back together and then cracks it slightly again at the end, it is both sad and joyful at the same time. The cruel destructiveness and warped manipulation that Knight rains down on the circus is devastating in how quickly it starts to destroy the beauty that was Dave Raydon's creation. Your heart breaks for the losses and the evil the characters have to endure, but despite there being times when the tension in this story is so tight that you can barely breath, there are also parts that make your soul soar. It is an expertly written story that draws you in and keeps you captive to the end. You are consumed by the characters in this book, they make you feel hope, despair, love, frustration and hate; it is a testament to how well put together this story is and how fully developed its charters are that they can create so much emotion in readers. It is spellbinding and tension filled, an amazing read with a beauty all its own. A truly magnificent end to a spectacular series.
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I love, love, love this review. Thank you!!! I can't believe you've finished the series. I really need to get to work to have something for you to read.
My review for
can also be found: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
**I received a copy of this book free from the author in exchange for an honest review**
I received this book through a RaR program that my author/friend Sarah Noffke runs through her fan group. It is the second one reviewed (the first being JN Chaney's awesome book The Amber Project), and there are many more to come. I was excited to read this because I am a fan of Japanese culture like the author. My boyfriend Pasha (may he rest in peace) was half-Japanese and introduced me to so much of the rich culture. I read Arthur Golden's Memoirs of a Geisha and learned as much about the history after that. I would love to go someday. I wanted to go with Pasha, but that will unfortunately not be an option. However, this book immersed me in the language and culture, and I really enjoyed that aspect of the book.
Now that I have gotten that out of the way...
The book is really only a 3.5 star rating, but I round up, not down. It's not a bad book. It's definitely not what I was expecting, though I honestly don't know what I was expecting. I do plan to continue the series, now that the end of this book has such a cliffhanger, but I didn't know if I was going to feel that way at first.
The book begins with Sanaa Griffin, an orphan raised by her lesbian aunts. The world has gone to hell (I mean, it IS a dystopian novel, so that's to be expected), and all people left live in a domed world separated by wards. The population is 70% Japanese...it's mainly because they were prepared technologically and the rest of us weren't. The dome is temperature controlled and located in Canada, but after hundreds of years, it is falling apart. The new mission is to colonize on a new planet named Yuseī, and preparations to get people there are under way. Sanaa is an engineer, but a strange man comes one day and decides to take her from her job and instead force her to watch surveillance videos of major crime bosses in the Japanese sector.
Also, there is a love interest. Jiro is sexy, with a white streak in his hair, and Sanaa can barely hope he would be interested in her. She's been with two men: an asshole and a casual friends with benefits relationship with a coworker. She hasn't had the best track record in love.
So I'm not going to give out spoilers, but I had two concerns with this novel. For one, most of the book was exposition. I kept reading and it took me until about 80% of the way through for anything to really happen to explain the circumstances surrounding Sanaa's new job assignment. Yes, she has a blooming relationship and wonders herself what is going on, but I started to get frustrated with the lack of rising action or a climax. And two, for a YA book, there's a lot of sex. Now don't get me wrong: I like a little romance in my novels. I don't READ romance novels, but I like romance IN my novels. This book is also marked NA, and I think that description matches the book much better. I don't think this is appropriate for younger readers. I would push that the age for readers of Removed should start at 17/18, and go up from there. Wouldn't want my high school students (my future ones, anyway) to read something with this much sex in it. So slow starter, and a little too racy. Those are my complaints.
The plus side? The book is rich in cultural knowledge, heavy on the passion in love, and fascinating when it comes to the world building. The ides that inspired the separate districts are clever, and I can see a lot more potential in this series now that it's starting to build into the story.
★★★★☆. As I said before, 3.5 or even 3.75, but I round up. Maybe now all the exposition is out of the way, the other books will be filled with more action or more suspense. More antagonism, I guess you could say is the word I'm looking for. But the book was not boring: the info on Japanese language and culture was fascinating. Do not recommend to readers who are not fans or interested in Asian culture. Less focus on the dystopia angle in this book, and more focus on Sanaa personally and the role she plays in her new life. And, of course, the blossoming love between Samaa and Jiro. Read those passages and be ready with a cold shower afterward...
