This is a wonderfully written story about four young people, ranging in ages and backgrounds, set during World War Two, detailing all the horrors and ravages of war, and its effects on those struggling to survive. Vivid and sometimes, horrific moments punctate the spare prose of each character’s short chapters.
\nThe four main characters: Florian (the Knight) a young Prussian with a mysterious stolen artefact, Joana, a Lithuanian nurse, and Emilia, an idealistic and damaged Polish girl who, at 15, is pregnant after being raped by Russian soldiers.
\nA fact we learn slowly over the course of the book, like many other heartbreaking details about each characters life. Their family, friends, and the tragedy each carries within them: secrets that weight them all down. Too young to carry such a heavy burden, but forced to by circumstances and war. The brutality that’s thrust upon them, and how each, in their own way, is forced to deal with pain unimaginable. The guilt and the shame they carry. And the horrors they have witnessed.
\nDespite the heavy weight subject, and the gruesome descriptions, we’re also offered a great deal of hope and light and small acts of heroism. Especially through the philosophical wisdom of the old Shoe Poet, whose positivity and moments of observational humour breaks up some of the bleakness. Sorry Eva too manages to momentarily divert us with her straightforward comments, opinionated about everything and everyone.
\nBut the main focus are the four intersection stories of Florian, Joana, Emilia and Alfred, a young sailor who spends a great deal of time lost in his head narrating letters he’ll never write, to a girl from his childhood.
\nI loved the alternating chapters and the alternating points of view. Sepetys carefully weaves historical facts into what is a fictional account, and gives us glimpses of what life was like for those fleeing two mighty armies hellbent on destruction, at any cost: including the lives of innocent children.
\nHer prose perfectly captures the heartbreak and sets a tone we can relate too—whatever our age—to these four young people struggling for survival. Some of them will make it, others will not be so lucky. Sadly history tells us about the ship our characters were escaping to, the Wilhelm Gustloff, which was torpedoed by the Soviets in January 1945 with over 10,500 people onboard, more than 9,000 of whom perished in the frozen sea that fateful day.
\nMoving and uncomfortable, heartbreaking and yet, at times, also uplifting, SALT TO THE SEA is a look into what happens to displaced people, lost in the cracks of history, forgotten, and gives them a gentle, insistent ‘voice’ to be heard, by us, the reader.
\n", "date_published": "2026-06-19T09:30:00-04:00", "url": "https://alexandrawolfe.ca/2026/06/19/salt-to-the-sea-by/", "tags": ["Book Review","Historical Fiction","YA"] }, { "id": "http://alexink.micro.blog/2026/06/09/scythe-by-neal-shusterman/", "title": "Scythe by Neal Shusterman", "content_html": "The premise for SCYTHE by Neal Shusterman is a really good one. It comes across as being unusual—here we have people who train to deal death as a means of culling the growing population in a world were everyone is, technically, immortal. This is a story that should have everything going for it. Sadly, however, the author fails to deliver on a rich promise in a satisfying or fulfilling way and the awful black and white view on morality is absurd for a so-called utopia.
\nWhich brings me to the utter lack of world building. There is none!
\nThe author has decided his audience is savvy enough to know when he says death has been conquered through technology, he doesn’t then have to explain how, he just mentions everyone has ‘Nanites’ in their system that takes care of everything … including death. But there is no science to back this up, nor how the ‘Cloud’ now called the Thunderhead, became self-aware after amassing the sum of all human knowledge.
\nWhy, for example, are the Scythes allowed to ‘glean’ at random, with any weapon they choose? And by what mechanism did the Scythes come into being to begin with?
\nLet’s take about the main characters of Citra and Rowan. Here we have two stand-ins that could have been lifted from the pages of either DIVERGENT or THE HUNGER GAMES. Neither of whom stand out in any way. Lacklustre at best, paper-thin at worst, they are a vapid means to an end when it comes to storytelling.
\nOh, and don’t get me started on one of my pet-peeves: insta-love. The pair are devoid of any chemistry, but that’s okay, they still ‘fall’ in love anyway. This is just sloppy, lazy writing.
\nThen there are the secondary characters, who come across as animated caricatures. Take the buffoon High Scythe who, despite programable nanites to take care of his health, decides he wants to be middle aged and overweight. Then there is the psychopathic serial killer bad guy, Scythe Goddard, whose Harry Potter blue robe glittering with diamonds, goes around murdering gleaning at will—en-masse—with impunity. Because these people have no depth of character, no background, or emotive context, their actions come across as simply crude and shocking.
Like the teens who think it’s funny to leap out of tall buildings to ‘splatt’ on the pavement below, because they’ll get great ice cream at the revival centre. And besides, they’re not really dead, just almost dead. You know, because of the nanites. Seriously, this is just ridiculous.
\nWho in their right mind thinks this is okay? What’s also sad is that this kind of senseless writing is gifted praise and garners prizes.
\nIn the end this came across as a pointless, overly long story, full of plot holes, aided and abetted by a lack of characterisation, with dull plodding prose, and utterly no world building whatsoever. While the best parts of Scythe—the journal entries and the two scythes, Faraday and Curie—to my mind, were never fully-realised, which is a shame because I think I would have liked their story better.
\nThis is one weird-assed dystopian-utopia that went ‘splatt’ on the pavement from utter ennui!
\n", "date_published": "2026-06-09T11:47:00-04:00", "url": "https://alexandrawolfe.ca/2026/06/09/scythe-by-neal-shusterman/", "tags": ["Fantasy","Book Review","YA"] } ] }