Fair warning: there is so much death in this. I swear to god, there's a corpse on every other page.

I'm exaggerating, but only a little bit.

So, the world-building is a little confusing. It starts off right in the middle of action, with no warm-up. You're thrust into post-apocalyptic Australia, where someone has ruined the land. Only specially modified seeds will grow, but they're running out. Rory's town is being, essentially, held hostage and condemned to die for... reasons. So Rory decides to walk to the Citadel (it's a long walk), the capital. This will... force... the government to relent? I guess?

Along the way, there's lots of violence, and lots of death. Lots of genetically modified animals, something called blood furies that are never explained, Reapers that aren't explained, and her brother is snatched up, and quickly forgotten.

Then when she's at the capital, there's all sorts of scheming and more corpses and she's thrust back into the circus - did I mention that? She used to be The Wind Dancer and this is actually an important plot point - and has to take care of a dying scientist and more dead people and also plot how to take down the entire system. She makes a very logical choice at the end (not) and then ends up working with the enemy and people turn against each other and really, this book is a ride .

It's not bad, by any means, but it's also not super great. It almost reminds me of The Forest of Hands and Teeth where Mary just kind of goes crazy and everyone dies and you kind of don't have any connection to any of the other characters. It's just - oh, well, there goes another one. There are some pretty nice quotes in here, and the cover is lovely, but I think there's just too much packed into one book.

Oh, and it's set in Australia, which is cool! Not that I could really tell, but you know. Australia. Probably because of all the fucking creepy animals that wanted to kill them. And the kangaroo.