Kindling

Finished this book a while ago but I was still mulling over my feelings with it. I really liked the concept, it's about the story of the life after the battle and how the people who fought cope with that new reality. . The fighters in the book, the Kindlings, have special magical powers and they were recruited from a very young age to fight. Reading the perspective of those Kindlings after the fight was what really intrigued me, having fought for all of their life and now being “free”, knowing that they don’t really have long to live after everything regardless. Everyone was lost, struggling to find a purpose, coping with various methods, trying to understand what it meant to really be “alive”. . The writing style is unique, I never read a book with a “You”-narrator ever (Idk how to explain it and I don’t know the right word for it, in the book the characters perspective wasn’t told in like “I did this, I thought that.” but in “You did this, you thought that.”) and I definitely had to get used to it. I like to read books from an outside perspective, I want to immerse myself into the story, but I don’t want to become the characters, that’s why I don’t really like the first person narrator and it felt worse with this narration, since it felt like I was directly spoken to. The writing itself was really nice tho! The inner thoughts and feelings were written in such heartbreaking way, everyone felt so real!! . The story itself is about a group of Kindlings, uniting to fight again to protect a small village. Everyone has their own struggles and flaws. They grow closer over time and try to come to terms with their fate and future ~ As you might know, I love stories with a friend group as main characters. It’s interesting to read about relationships/dynamics and multiple perspectives and personalities who tell the story! Like I said, every character was flawed in their own way, having a flawed view, taking flawed actions, all resulting of their own personal trauma with the war. Of course the book talked about many heavy topics too, it’s war after all. All in all, a really good but I had other story expectations (that’s on me tbh), I would still recommend it!!