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[close] April 19th, 2024

Shen: I was a bit pensive picking this up since I didn't enjoy Fonda Lee's other novella, The Jade Setter of Janloon, but I enjoyed this one. It works perfectly fine as a novella and does everything it's supposed to, but I feel that this would've been even better as a full book. There's so many interesting concepts in this that reminded me of Nahoko Uehashi's The Beast Player, but the novella's short length detracts from the themes and characters. Some readers may find it hard to become invested in the world because of this.

Zahra and the other rocs were truly the stars of this novella. I loved learning about how they're trained, the different personalities they have, and the ways in which they bond with their respective ruhkers (aka trainers). The push and pull between human and animal is poignant and devastating at times.

I feel like the ending undermined this otherwise fantastic dynamic, along with the human characters just paling so much in comparison to the animals. The humans feel like sketches and concepts and there were a few things here and there that made me question the writing.

Overall, Untethered Sky successfully won me over though I know it's not something I'll reread or think that much about. The one element of it was so strong for me that it bumped it up to 4 stars but it just proved to me how difficult it is to write a fantasy novella.