I am a huge fan of Marie Lu’s prior works and was so excited when I got the email that I had been chosen to be part of SKYHUNTER’s Street Team. Helping promote the newest book by one of my favorite authors has been such an awesome opportunity, and to top it off, I got to read an electronic copy early!
I love Marie Lu’s style of worldbuilding and this book was no exception. Her writing immerses the reader into the world of her novels immediately, and the information given always feels natural, and not like info-dumping just to get the information to the reader. This creates a rich world and a book that is hard to put down because it is so immersive.
Read more: Review: SKYHUNTER by Marie Lu (Release 09/29/2020)I loved the story of Talin, Red, Adena, Jeran, Aramin, and those who impacted their lives. That ending has me on the edge of my seat waiting for book two, and in my opinion, book two cannot come soon enough! I can’t wait to see the repercussions of that finale, and Talin’s choice at the close of the book. I found myself dragging out reading the last 20% of this book because I just wasn’t ready to leave this world, these characters, or their stories.
As a disabled reader, Marie Lu’s disability representation has always meant so much to me because her disabled characters are richly fleshed out, and allowed to be heroes and protagonists, and SKYHUNTER was no different. Talin’s disability being an advantage as a striker, and her stubborn refusal of the idea that she needed to be fixed or cured is so important for people to see. When so much representation reduces disabled characters to someone to pity, someone who is broken and needs to be “fixed” or “cured”, or a character to kill off to move the protagonist’s story or motivation forward, Lu’s dedication to making her disabled characters seem three dimensional and letting them be integral to her stories always catches me a little bit off guard because good representation is so hard to find. The fact that the other Strikers never look down on her for her muteness, her status as a refugee sometimes, but never her muteness also stood out to me.
Jeran and Aramin caught me by surprise. As secondary characters, I didn’t expect to fall in love with them and their relationship as hard as I did. There were multiple times where Aramin’s actions as they related to Jeran brought tears to my eyes. I also loved how Aramin slowly moves from being shown as an authority figure that despite being close in age to the main crew of characters is distinctly separate due to his role as the Firstblade, to being shown as the young man he is through his relationship with Jeran and his willingness to aid the main crew even when it could cause issues because he still remembers what standing in their places was like, and Jeran keeps him tethered to that experience which shines through toward the end of the novel.
I also loved Talin and Red’s dynamic as they went from enemies to reluctant allies to friends to potentially something more, which is one reason that I cannot wait for book two is to see where exactly their relationship progresses to because of the choices made at the end of the novel. Their relationship felt like a natural progression to me despite the short time frame due to their link allowing the process to be sped up a bit in getting to know each other.
Marie Lu did not disappoint with SKYHUNTER and I can’t wait to receive my finished copy in the mail!