She lets out a snort that blasts seawater from all three blowholes lined along the ridge of her skull.

Durga’s head is the first thing to emerge from the waves, the brutal lines of her reptilian beak fading into the soft wrinkles that wreathe her huge, round eyes. I hang back on the concrete meridian and raise the Tanto strapped to my wrist, jabbing the button that ignites the miniature LED beacon.Īs the blue lights glow and a low tone rings out over the water, she rises. But it's definitely 100% worth reading for the characters alone and I'm definitely going to check out the sequel!! Read moreĪny other morning, I’d dive into Durga’s observation bay without hesitation, but this is the day before my life begins. So the lack of detail, the lack of worldbuilding and the dragging plot were downsides to this book for sure. There are also a few scenes that kind of just.existed for no reason and frustrated me because they way they were presented left me, at least, viewing them as foreshadowing. Like even the fact that it's now called the NeoPacific.that's never even explained and all it'd take would be a throwaway sentence or two to address this. I like that the infodumps are kept to a minimum but there's very little background given as to when or why or how things happen. The book isn't long so these stretches are particularly apparent. The pacing is incredibly uneven (something I see in a lot of YA) where you have long stretches of literally nothing happening. The plot is why this book isn't a 4-star for me unfortunately. I love Santa Elena-how often do we get such a well-defined, complex woman as a villain? Santa Elena was all of that.sometimes you could understand her and why she acted as she did, but mostly you just hated her and that's so great. I love Cas, I love how she thinks through her situation, how she acknowledges her flaws and yet still persists. This is rare in a lot of action-adventure books so I was incredibly impressed to see certain hallmarks of the genre thrown aside in favor of nuance and deeper understanding.

The characters were incredibly well-developed and their relationships were realistic and presented in a very attentive, careful way.

I enjoyed this book very much, but looking back I think I loved the characters far more than the plot.

The abyss surrounds us book 2