The Isle in the Silver Sea

This is a beautiful love letter to story-telling, doting especially on the changing nature of tales and how a story retold cannot stay the same as it once was.

It's at once a fairytale sapphic love story full of knights in shining armour, dragons, curses, and witches, and also a clever critique on the power of words. It uses fairytales as a lens to examine propaganda and censorship and highlights the necessity of change.

I feel conflicted because this was such a promising premise and highly relevant to current conversations on censorship, but the sharp edge of the story felt dull by the final act. The world-building at the beginning was fantastical, the magic system was intriguing, but then London came into the picture with a shape-shifting nature and I was lost. The physical change of the main characters was necessary but felt like a whole other book with a climax that read a little rushed.

There is lots to love about this book and I think Tasha Suri is an amazing writer. I think it is a wonderful look at fairytales, oral story-telling, retellings and the like. It's definitely a book that loves books and I will champion it for that over and over.