Review: Ten Thousand Skies Above You by Claudia Gray

Stop measuring yourself against us. It’s not the right scale. You have your own gifts, your own talents. Show the world everything you’re capable of, Marguerite. You don’t even see how amazing you are. - Claudia Gray, Ten Thousand Skies Above You

Look, another sequel! Read ahead at your own risk!

Guys. THIS BOOK. Do you remember my review for the first one? Do you remember how much I loved that one? This one was just as amazing, if not moreso. CLAUDIA. GIRL. YOU KNOW YOUR WAY AROUND A SEQUEL.

Literally everything I loved about the first book was present within these glorious pages. The well-placed flashbacks, the pacing, the Russiaverse. GUYS. I almost wanted to cry from the sheer joy and surprise of returning to the setting of my favourite arc from the first book. And, unlike the first book, the climax and ending caught me completely off guard. That's hard to do, guys, trust me. I ask a lot of "what if" questions.

Ten Thousand Skies Above You came out back in November. I bought it almost the day it came out, but for some reason that I can't even comprehend, I waited until just last month to read it. In retrospect, this was probably a good idea, because the idea of waiting until NEXT NOVEMBER for the conclusion seems absurd, and at this point, it's less than six months away. I JUST CAN'T WAIT THAT LONG, OKAY. I JUST CAN'T.

Probably my favourite part about this book--and about 75% of the reason I say my girl Claudia knows her way around a sequel--is how she took the themes of the first book and expanded on them so freaking well in this one. In A Thousand Pieces of You, Marguerite explored the concept of destiny, of being meant to be with someone over and over again in a hundred thousand lifetimes. She saw how similar she and her family and friends were across dimensions--how her parents were always drawn to science, her sister to adventure, herself to the visual arts. At the beginning of this book, she believed that a fundamental part of a person's soul remained the same over dimensions, that each Paul or Theo or Marguerite is the same person. Then she discovered that that's not really the case--each version of someone is their own person, with their own life, their own memories, their own feelings. They can't be held to par with a different version of them, because they're just not the same person.

Marguerite had her beliefs going into this new adventure, and with each dimension she visited, she found herself at odds with them. Things weren't as simple or as black-and-white as she thought or wanted them to be. And I just loved how Gray took this concept that seemed so obvious and crystal clear and showed that it really wasn't. It was extremely well done.

I also loved how she started to dive into the ethics of inter-dimensional travel. It's a fun thought, the idea of being able to jump into another dimension and live another life. But revisiting the Russiaverse allowed Marguerite to see the real consequences of her visits, of what these other versions of her go through both while she's borrowing their body and after she leaves. Is it really fair to use the body of another for your own purposes, even if they live a dimension away?

ANYWAY. Y'all can bet that I'll be buying the finale the second it comes out. (The title alone makes me want to cry because EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS SERIES IS WONDERFUL.) Finales are often hard to execute, especially when the rest of the series is as well done as this, but I have the utmost faith that Gray can pull it off. (CLAUDIA, YOU'RE MY GIRL. I BELIEVE.)

Five stars to you, Claudia Gray. Five hundred million stars, one for every world that a Marguerite lives on in.

Until later,

- Justyne

Book Review: A Thousand Pieces of You

WARNING: The following blog posts contain spoilers for the novel under review, ranging from mild to heart wrenchingly major. If you have yet to read this novel and dislike being spoiled, leave now and return upon completion.

If you HAVE read this novel (or just don't give a crap about spoilers), then continue on.

But don't say I didn't warn you.

~~

HELLO, FRIENDS! Today we're going to be talking about A Thousand Pieces of You by Claudia Gray!

THE PLOT-Y BIT

Marguerite's parenst have changed the world; they've not only proved the theory of the multiverse, but created the Firebird, a device that allows the wearer to jump between the different universes. They are overjoyed, triumphant, and a shoo in for the next nobel prize.

But then Marguerite's father is murdered, the Firebird stolen, and all of the data they've accumulated over the last several years wiped. Gone. Destroyed. And with their trusted grad student assistant Paul missing, it's looking extremely likely that he's the one responsible.

Devastated and betrayed, Marguerite teams up with Theo, her parents' second assistant, and together they leap through the invisible barrier to follow Paul as he jumps through the different universes. From a futuristic London to a Tsarist Russia, Marguerite lives through different versions of her life as she fights to find her father's killer. As the details of her father's murder begin to come to light, however, she starts to doubt whether Paul is truly responsible.

THE REVIEW-Y BIT

THIS BOOK. THIS BEAUTIFUL, WONDERFUL BOOK. I really liked this book, in case you couldn't already tell.

I was both excited for this book, but also a little wary. The synopsis was intriguing and the cover is absolutely beautiful (seriously though check it out it's gorgeous), but I thought that story itself was going to be handled differently than it actually was, and I was pleasantly surprised.

First of all, I thought that Marguerite lived in the future, or a more futuristic version of our world, which I learned right off the bat wasn't true. She's from our world, in our time, which made it a whole lot easier to relate to her as she jumped to all of these unfamiliar universes. Not only that, but she wasn't some scientific genius--she was an artist, and in fact the only member of her family to not be super involved in the scientific world. The fact that she was just as clueless about how the Firebird worked as we, the readers, are, is not only a relief but also a pleasure as she struggles to understand the workings and thoughts of her peers.

Secondly, I thought that Marguerite and Theo would be jumping from realm to realm a lot faster than they actually did. Have any of you ever read Reincarnation by Suzanne Weyn? That is the kind of pacing I was expecting. Although the stories are remarkably different, they follow a similar theme of jumping from lifetime to lifetime. Reincarnation moves at a slightly faster pace, tackling at least a dozen different worlds before the final page. A Thousand Pieces of You, on the other hand, takes the pacing a bit slower, with our main characters only travelling to a grand total of four alternate realities. This gave me a chance to get to know each of these different  worlds and lives of our main character, without feeling too confused or out of the loop every time she jumped to a new one.

That Russian arc. Oh my sweet goodness. In the middle of the book, there was an arc spanning several chapters in which Marguerite breaks her Firebird and finds herself trapped in Tsarist Russia as a Grand Duchess. That entire arc was my favourite, with all of the romance between her and Russian-bodyguard-Paul, and her growing love for all of the new siblings that she had in this Royal life, and the excitement and suspense as someone tries to overthrow her "father" as the Tsar. I never wanted that arc to end, it was too great.

Not gonna lie: Theo's betrayal was kind of expected on my part. He seemed suspicious to me right from the get go, so when he revealed to be behind the conspiracy surrounding everything, I wasn't at all surprised. The reveal with Marguerite's father, on the other hand...that was extremely well done. Fantastically subtle foreshadowing throughout the book leading to that big reveal, so it didn't seem out of the blue while also not being expected or obvious. (Or unrealistic, either.) More than makes up for the slight Theo disappointment, if you ask me.

Finally, the flashbacks littered throughout the book to tell us of Marguerite's own life, and her relationships with both Paul and Theo were very well placed, so by the end I really felt that I knew Marguerite, the real Marguerite, even though she spent the majority of the book pretending to be different versions of herself. The way she was able to relate to each of her different alter egos, as well, was a pleasure--even in the most drastically different of worlds, Marguerite was still Marguerite, and that was just a really cool thing to see.

THE RATING-Y BIT

Five stars. Five stars, five stars, FIVE MILLION STARS to you, Claudia Gray! You did good. You did very very good.

Also would like to note that this book both wrapped up nicely and neatly enough to be a stand alone, but also leaves enough open for a sequel...which is coming. Ten Thousand Skies Above You is coming THIS NOVEMBER, which is much too far away for my liking.


Until later,

- Justyne