Rating: 3.5 out of 5

Genre: Sci-Fi / Fantasy, YA, 

People who should read this: If you love atmospheric reads about the ocean without there being pirates. 

OMG! A book about sailing that doesn’t involve pirates. 

You might just hate me right now for saying that. I love pirates, but the trend was starting to get a little old. The pirate thing can only go in so many different ways, so the stories have gotten a little stale. I’ll say the same thing about westerns or western themed stories. Not that I read a lot of westerns. 

And you might not entirely agree that Fable isn’t a pirate story since the Marigold acts as a dark ship, which could be in a way considered a pirate ship. I’m sorry, but that’s just semantics. The word pirate was never mentioned, they never were or called themselves pirates, they didn’t commandeer other ships, and that skull flag doesn’t exist in this world. So there. Even though the tiny bit at the end is very piraty. 

Let’s move on before this gets ugly… just kidding. 

The thing I love about Young that has me coming back for more, is that she creates these beautiful relationships that seem so fresh right now. It’s not all about the main POV’s love life or besties. Young’s stories tend to center more around family and that awkwardness. Like hey, my dad just left me on an island. Let’s talk about how that’s screwed me up. Which brings me to one of the best things about Fable besides the atmosphere (I’ll get there in a second), Fable and her dad. The whole premise is about her getting off Jeval to find him, to get what’s owed to her. Readers get this idea of him, shown through Fable’s eyes. But the truth is heartbreaking and raw and all so relatable.

Is Young ever going to write a book where both of the parents are alive???

Now for the main reason that Fable even got the rating that it did - the world. Wow. Everything about the world had me swooning, and I’m not one for epic stories based solely around a world. Fable might just have me changing my mind. The diving, the gems, the tiniest bit of magic in it. All so beautifully thought out. I want to wade in the waters of this world. Everything came to my mind easily, and somehow, Young pulls this off without flowery descriptions either. Her writing is actually sparse, pared down, leaving the reader a chance to picture it all in their heads. That does not mean that I didn’t get the world right. When I saw Young’s Pinterest board for the book, my mind wasn’t far off from what she imagined when she was writing. 

One quick side note… Since this is the first book outside of the Sky in the Deep universe, I would like to say the characters were their own people. I heard different voices. Whew… I was worried there. 

Now I really hope that I didn’t talk this book up too much. Keep in mind my rating, because I struggled a lot. Fun fact, I didn’t get very far the first time I tried to read Fable. Nope. It took me three months and the threat of it coming out soon to finally get into the thing. I feel horrible. Here I was with a bound manuscript and I wasn’t even taking advantage of it until the real book was about to come out. I’m sorry friends. 

The struggle comes down to the plot and the romance and a tiny bit of the characters. The characters weren’t so bad. I wouldn’t complain about them. But that’s the issue. I didn’t care about them. I liked Fable and I really liked Willa and Saint was another good one. That was it. Small touches on trying to make the book diverse, well… I see what you’re trying to do there Young and it feels like you’re cheating. 

Moving on from that. 

The only tension came from the world, not the characters. I wouldn’t say that was a bad thing, but it caused me to struggle with finding a care for what happened to the characters. No heart strings were pulled in the reading of this book. I knew the romance was coming too, I would be surprised if Young didn’t include romance. Yet again, when it was finally imagined on the page, nothing. Nilch. I didn’t care. It also came out of nowhere. Slow burn? How about a surprise. There was a lot of room to add in hints instead of the out of left field admission that was supposed to set a reader’s heart fluttering. 

Oh well… 

This just makes me sad. I wanted so much more for Young. I want to love her writing as much as I love her. 

Upon reading other people’s reviews, I’d also like to note that there are no plot twists in the story. I lie… the very end might be one. Shock value for it is near zero though. Please don’t listen to those reviews and get your hopes up. In fact, those “plot twists” are very obvious story points that take no imagination. I’m sorry. I hate to sound like the worst person right now but I need to be truthful with all of you. I don’t want you getting your hopes up. 

So anyways… if you’re a writer, read it for the world building and the atmosphere, but don’t take anything else away.

Happy Reading

Love Kait

Reading Challenge: 123/175