I think this book will be in the top 5 fiction books I read this year. (I generally read 40+ fiction books a year, for reference.)
I wanna talk about this book, but the plot is hidden behind major spoilers. You’ve been warned.
This is a story about Hell invading Heaven.
This is a setting loosely inspired by Hindu/Buddhist karma, your good and evil deeds result in you ascending and descending through a series of fantasy worlds loosely inspired by Heaven and Hell dimensions. These are not actual heavens or hells, but worlds which are pleasant to live in vs worlds which are hellish to live in. A group of people, called the Balancers, travel from Heaven down to Hell in an attempt to save people, bringing them back to fantasy world reminiscent of Heaven.
The midpoint climax of the book reveals that the bad guys have discovered a way to artificially travel from one plane of existence to another. The evil king unites various barbarian clans in a hell-dimension with the intent to invade and destroy the soft and unmilitarized Heaven-like fantasy world. The Balancers must race against time to prevent the laws of karma (called Toranic Law) from being shattered, leading to the deaths of countless in the heaven-like fantasy worlds.
Before we begin, do you have a book which needs editing? Do you want to read more reviews? Here is a link: The Rest of My In Depth Reviews
WHAT IS THE TARGET AUDIENCE? WHAT GENRES? WHAT MAJOR TROPES?
- YA
- High Fantasy
- 13+ year old target audience
- Good prose
- Elegant, but not overly flowery. Good for it’s 13+ audience
- LGBT, but it’s in the subtext
- No Romance
- Rebellion against the Evil Empire
- Karma-inspired setting, with multiple planets inspired by Hindu/Buddhist Heavens and Hells.
- Not a Heaven and Hell filled with angels and demons, but various planets ranging from extremely friendly for human life (lots of food, friendly people, no war) to extremely unfriendly for human life (little food, monsters everywhere, constant wars).
- Daughter-mother relationship issues
MY EMOTIONAL RESPONSE/ FUN FACTOR
I had a great time reading this book. It had a fun setting and great worldbuilding. I loved how the author let the softness of the heaven-like planets engender softness in the characters who live there, and vice/versa for the hell-planets. This was well-thought out.
I loved this. I feel like the author respected her YA audience, and really created a deep and nuanced setting. I very very rarely see YA books which respect their audience as much as this one does. I can say that even if you don’t ordinarily like YA books, you should check this out. Fans of Brandon Sanderson or Robert Jordan would probably enjoy this. In addition, it’s compared to Naruto and The Last Airbender.
WARNING! QUIT READING NOW UNTIL YOU FINISH READING THE BOOK!
BIASES STATED
To put this review/study in proper context, you must know my starting point.
I came into this book cautiously optimistic. I heard one or two reviews for it, and went into it fairly blind.
SIMILAR BOOKS/OTHER BOOKS IN THE SERIES
- I’d compare this book to A Touch of Light by Thiago Abdalla. Strong worldbuilding with strong characters in a distinct setting.
CONCEPT AND EXECUTION
This book’s concept is: There exist four interlinked worlds: two pleasant worlds and two hellish worlds. Good deeds cause you to slowly climb to better worlds. The good worlds are ruled by a well-intentioned dictatorship, who do nothing to help the people stuck suffering on the hellish worlds. The bad guys in this book seek to upset the balance, bring down the dictatorship, and make all four worlds equal. It’s up to 3 heroes to chart a third path, subduing the bad guys before they free demons from the lowest hell and going against the will of the dictatorship.
I thought the book was well executed. This is a traditional YA novel starring young adult characters who actually feel like teenagers, with emotional problems, self-doubts and guilt. The author kept the scope of the book relatively constrained to two of the four worlds with just a handful of characters, going deep instead of broad; this was wise, because with a multiple-planet spanning story this book could have easily gotten unwieldy.
In the end, this book is sharp, crisp, and to the point. It has a good message for a YA audience, but is enjoyable for adults as well. There is plenty of emotional heft in this book.
CHARACTERS, CHARACTERIZATION AND DIALOG
Aina was born in a ‘survival of the fittest’ fantasy world, filled with enormous and lethal monsters; through an act of kindness, Aina escapes Hell and joins Heaven. She’s heartbroken, for when she travelled to Heaven she left left her family behind in a fantasy world reminiscent of Hell. She joins with the Balancers in an attempt to return to her family.
Meizan is another Balancer, a native of the same ‘survival of the fittest’ world. I liked how the author portrayed the culture of the Hell-like fantasy world. They see their world as harsh, but they don’t want to leave it. It’s their home; the trials they experience help forge them into stronger warriors. They (justifiably) see the people of the Heaven-like fantasy worlds as pompous and lazy.
Aranel is a native of a Heaven-like fantasy planet, and is shocked to his core when he travels to the Hell-like world. He’s forced to compromise his nonviolent morality just to survive. What follows is a strong Hero’s Journey character arc, as Aranel gradually gains moral insight while in the crucible of Hell, beginning the deconstruction process of leaving a poisonous religion. And I liked the ending involving Aranel; it seemed appropriate for such a naïve character.
I enjoyed these protagonists. All of them have a rich internality which reflect the setting they were born and raised in. Aranel’s snobbishness reflects the culture he comes from; Meizan’s brutality reflects his homeworld. When Aranel and Meizan come into conflict with one another, it feels like a natural outgrowth of who they are as people. Likewise, Aranel’s deconstruction process from his Heaven-ly faith and Meizan’s frustration with his Hell-ish world feel palpable.
And finally, I enjoyed the motivations of the bad guys. Ultimately, they are in the right: the status quo of the setting is fundamentally unjust and does need to be destroyed. I like it when authors don’t use simple morality of ‘hero=good, villain=evil.’ The bad guys in this span a spectrum from wantonly cruel warlords, to thoughtful scientists, and obstructive bureaucrats. These bad guys aren’t ultra-nuanced, but are significantly better than average.
PACING AND STRUCTURE
I’ll use the 3 act format to discuss the character arcs for each protagonist.
Aranel:
- Act 1: He’s a police officer in a heavenly-world, but instead of enforcing the law with force use uses kindness. He feels bad for Aina.
- Act 2: He’s enlisted to spy on the Balancers, and secretly joins them. He travels to Aina’s hellish homeworld, and learns just how soft and easy he’s had life until now.
- Act 3: He realizes his entire worldview is a lie. The dictatorship which rules the worlds of Heaven stands to benefit from the cruelty which happens in the hellish dimensions. For the sake of morality, he turns against the forces he was once an officer for.
Aina
- Act1: She’s rejected from her hellish homeworld, and banished to a heavenly planet. She regrets the change, and wants to return home to her mother. She joins the Balancers to return home.
- Act2: While with the balancers, she trains to use magic and fight. She’s captured and nearly killed by the bad guys, but her mother saves her. Her mother is NOT happy to see her. Aina and mom never had a good relationship, and mom was grateful Aina went to heaven to get rid of her.
- Act3: Aina is captured by the bad guys again, and uses her magic to help them win the final battle. Stuff happens, and Aina’s mom dies trying to save Aina. Aina finally realized that her mom cared about her all along.
Meizan
- 1: His entire clan was captured or wiped out by the evil king. He joins the balancers, having no other home to go to.
- 2a: He befriends Aranel. Gay tension ensues.
- 2b: He discovers that his family actually survived the act 1 massacre, and is a rebel force now in the evil king’s kingdom. He tries to rejoin them, but his chieftain tells him to stay in the Balancers.
- 3: He joins the rescue mission to save Aina in act 3, and fights with his chieftain to save her. Ultimately, Meizan and Aranel end up fighting on opposite sides of the final battle.
The book had good pacing. I read it in two days.
PLOT, STAKES AND TENSION
I enjoyed the plot. It felt intricate, but with every piece serving a narrative purpose.
The stakes and tension felt substantial, with the weight of four worlds in the balance.
AUTHORIAL VOICE (TONE, PROSE AND THEME)
In the character section, I mentioned how I liked that the author gave the culture of each planet a unique character. The author could have very easily defaulted to ‘people from harsh planet are always bad, people from pleasant planet are always good.’ I liked that the author avoided such broad generalizations. Yeah, the people from the Hell-dimensions had brusque personalities, but they’re not evil.
The people from the Hell-dimensions time and again are willing to self-sacrifice to protect their loved ones, whereas those from the heaven-dimensions more or less take their family for granted. I liked that the author used this interaction to show that in some ways the people native to Hell are actually morally superior to those from Heaven.
The prose and setting and characters all show an attention to detail from the author. This is a book intended for a YA audience, however the author did NOT dumb down the language or ideas she used. Like I said above, the author respects her audience and pushes them to keep up with a rich and compelling setting and narrative.
For example, I enjoyed how the author forthrightly addressed the fundamental inequity native in the system of karma (or Toranic Law, in this case). How is it fair that children are punished by being born into a hell-dimension, when children are born innocent? The book treated the people of the heaven-dimensions as the upper class, making this book a pointed commentary about classism and poverty.
Likewise, religion. The people in the Heaven-planets are strictly controlled by religion. Aranel has several holy texts memorized, as an example. Aranel is manipulated by one of his religious superiors who uses Aranel’s piety against him.
SETTING, WORLDBUILDING AND ORIGINALITY
I loved the worldbuilding. Four linked worlds, two harsh, two paradisiacal. I liked how the author took beliefs of karma and used it to explore concepts of societal inequality. People born into a hell-dimension have little hope of moving on to heaven because they the must make amoral choices to merely survive; as a result, the rich get richer, and poor get poorer in terms of karma. The setting and ideas wove together fantastically.
I wanted a little more from the details of this book. What sorts of food did they eat? What did things smell like? What sort of cloth did they wear? That sort of thing. I wanted more descriptive texture. Do people from the ‘civilized’ planets wear nice clothing, while those from the brutish ones wear armor and leather? There were a few details: for example, volcanos in the Heaven-like world explode with flowers, compared to lava in the hellish world. But there could have been more.
And finally, MORE MONSTERS! I liked how the settings were described as being rich with magnificent monsters, both great and terrible. What we got shown was amazing to read. I wanted more of them.
AUDIOBOOK NOTES
The audiobook narrator did a great job of differencing people based on origin. People from one planet all spoke with one accent, as an example. It added immersion to the story. However, it was a British voice actor. I think it might have been better if it had an Asian voice actor.
LESSONS LEARNED
As an author, I want to improve my own writing/editing skills. To that end, I like to learn lessons from every story I read. Here’s what I learned from this story:
- Treat your reader with respect, even for YA audiences. This book was unafraid to approach difficult topics using somewhat elaborate language, even though children were the target. A+ work by the author.
Here’s a link to all the lessons I’ve previously learned.
SUMMARY
Again, this book did not knock my socks off, but I do think this will be in the top 5 books I read this year. It was just that good.
John Mendez- Book Reviews and More 