Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Author: Heather Fawcett
Genres: Fantasy, Young Adult
Read: Sept. 2017

I can’t decide between 3 and 4 stars, so I’m rounding up.

Yay for Canadian authors and even more yay for a Vancouver author! I absolutely loved the setting in this novel. I live in Vancouver and I’m a little bit obsessed with hiking and mountains (as are a lot of Vancouverites) and I’ve always been fascinated with climbing expeditions, so I was super stoked to read the synopsis for Even the Darkest Stars. Also, the cover art is the most gorgeous thing I’ve ever seen!

Even the Darkest Stars is set in a fantasy version of the Himalayas. Kamzin and her sister Lusha live in a tiny village at the base of Mount Raksha, the biggest and least explored mountain in the empire. All her life Kamzin has dreamed of setting off on an adventure and of being an explorer, so when the Royal Explorer River Shara shows up in her village on an expedition to climb Mount Raksha and retrieve a rare talisman, Kamzin is determined to assist him. When Lusha disappears in the dead of night with one of River’s expeditionary crew to retrieve the talisman first, River hires Kamzin and they race to catch up to Lusha and get to the talisman first.

I liked the narrator and the writing from the start, but it took about half of the book for it to really pick up. There was a lot of journeying in the first half of the book and limited action – and when there was action it often happened very quickly and felt kind of out of place. But I really enjoyed the second half of the book and I definitely want to read the sequel!

I thought the “twist” was a bit obvious, but it didn’t take away from the story. I loved Kamzin and River’s characters and I can’t wait to learn more about River in the next book, but I felt the rest of the cast was a bit lacklustre. I don’t think I really learned enough about Lusha or Tem to really love them. We’re told that Lusha and Kamzin had a contentious relationship growing up, but I would have liked to have learn more about their history to back it up.

But like I said, the setting was really the strongest part of this novel and I’m interested to see what Fawcett does with it in the sequel!