Let me start with the fact that it was very much stated upfront that it's a gaslamp Fantasy ... which I had zero clue what that meant. Also, I feel like I've mentioned this before, but I'm not a super huge fantasy reader. So why did I say "Count me in! Pick me!" when I got the email about this? I don't know.
I did not realize that Rick Bettencourt has not written a book in 6 years. If this is what he was waiting for, totally worth it.
It's hard for me to really explain what happens in this book because there are so many twists. There are also a lot of parallels to various societal issues.
I wasn’t expecting this book to make me think so much, but there are a lot of topics at play: the role religion and belief play into one’s actions, the pressure to conform when it goes against what you believe, is progress truly moving us forward or building us a bigger cage (the same question could be asked of religion), what makes someone normal and what is the price of being normal, and at the end of the day, who can you really trust?
As the sheltered Christian kid trend on TikTok would say, I saw SO many religion parallels in this story and thought they were woven in beautifully, in a way where you let the readers draw their own conclusions and see that some people twist it to use it for their personal gain, but some truly believe it and are sincere in their beliefs, and others like Diesel are skeptical but can still love them in spite of their differences in beliefs.
I found Diesel to be an easy character to root for. I felt the tension between what he wanted for himself and what he felt he had to do. It’s mentioned multiple times that Diesel tends to put others first, and I can’t wait to see what happens for him when he truly puts himself first. Can he have everything he wants, while still taking care of everyone else? I guess I’ll have to wait for the next book to find out more! I can’t wait to see how things play out for Diesel and the rest of his found family.
However, I think that Bingham and Elio are my favorite characters. As the parent of a special needs child, I felt some of that same energy coming from Bingham and I loved that Bettencourt wrote a world where he found a family that loved him and still retained that internal goodness when it would have been easy for him to become bitter.
I cannot wait for the second book in this series to come out!
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