Brutal, sad, eerie, and, ultimately, hopeful. The imagery was amazing but I had to put it down a few times to recover. ( )

The first few pages of this were vivid and textured and promised something nicely off-kilter, but by about a third of the way in, Nicole Kornher-Stace shifts gears to a much more rote YA dystopia. So much of the book is taken up with the main character, Wasp, learning about events from centuries before via a kind of flashback device that sap the plot of much momentum and make her curiously passive—even though I'm sure we're supposed to read this as a quest narrative through which Wasp learns to come into herself, yadda yadda.

Kornher-Stace gestures towards world-building, but there are gaping plot holes and inconsistencies. Characters do that thing of not communicating with one another because, well, the book needs to be another 100 pages longer so why share this helpful information? This is true both on the part of the unnamed ghost (ah, the plot convenient bouts of amnesia!) and of Wasp herself (never once in all their walking through the underworld does someone whom we're told is smart and curious about the world and who's basically a professional ghost-knife-wielding anthropologist take the chance to ask the ghost questions about the past and what happened to the world? no?).

A book with no sense of its own purpose. ( )

3.5 Stars ( )

Excellent writing, and a harsh, abusive, survival story. Wasp is a ghost hunter (sort of) and a tormented shaman figure to her people, desperately seeking a way out of her life and also the history of her apocalypse. Not an easy book, but an intense adventure through death and dreamlands, to find one ghost's past. Some superhero actions (peripherally), some Mad Max dystopia. Mostly just an excellently told tale. ( )

3.5 stars rounded down to 3 because it is bleak as hell. I know it is pre-apocalyptic with ghosts so it wasn't going to be a cheerful read but there was just so much bleeding and suffering. It was a great blend of fantasy and sci-fi. Hunger Games vibes but darker and with supersoldiers and the underworld. ( )