4.5/5 stars
Recommended if you like: parallel worlds, fantasy creatures, magic, time travel, enemies to lovers
Big thanks to G.P. Putnam's Sons, Netgalley, and the author for an ARC in exchange for a review! Also thanks to Kika for inviting me to be on her street team!
Six years prior to the start of the book, a portal of darkness opened in Shanghai and a Darkdragon flew out. Since then, several more portals have opened, some big, like the Maw in New York City, and some small, like in sewers and basements. This collision of worlds means contact between humans and creatures like Shanghai's Darkdragon and others like Darkgriffins and Darkmanticores. Humans naturally found a way to fight back, with nova lights that can hurt or even disintegrate Dark creatures. But there is also contact with smaller, more benign creatures like Darkmoths, Darkferns, and Darkrats. Some people, like Sascia and her cousin Danny, are fascinated by the Dark, others are ambivalent, and others still, like Sascia's sister Ksenya, are terrified of it.
This is the world the book opens up into, with Sascia giving tours at the Maw to make money on the side after her Umbra Cohort stipend was cut. Brilliant, but more interested in bugs than classwork, Sascia managed to get into the elite group of students studying the Dark and changing the world...but then failed requirement that she also get into Columbia University. Oops. She's definitely down about it, but she's also kind of angry, because the work she and Danny are doing with the Darkmoths and Darkfauna really is saving lives, and she's kind of got a point that she's already doing that without an Ivy League education...so why does she need it? But Sascia also has a lot of guilt, and while she stands up for herself at the Umbra Cohort, there are other things in her past that result in her sometimes just trudging along to get along, no matter how much she might disagree.
The Umbra Cohort is an odd group. There's Sascia, as mentioned, and her cousin Danny, who is interested in Darkfauna. The two of them have been best friends since childhood and work together on their Darkmoth and Darkfauna warning map. Then there's Tae, whom Danny has a crush on, the 'golden child' of the program, who seems to be a genius among geniuses. He's standoffish and aloof, though this seems to largely be a facade, as he also comes through when it counts and does genuinely seem to care about the rest of the Cohort and about the Dark. Shivani works with Darkrats and is pretty open and friendly. Andres does genetics work with the Dark creatures, and is overall a bit of a mystery despite being with the group for several years. And finally Crow, a computer hacker whom we only ever actually get to meet via computer.
Sascia is someone who loves the Dark, wholly and completely, even with the danger it sometimes poses. She loves it more than the rest of the Umbra Cohort, who are deeply interested as well, but for Sascia it's everything. So really, Sascia is the perfect person to pull a person out of the Dark.
Thus begins the timey-wimey stuff. Because the prince who tries to kill returns as a princess on Halloween, younger and with no memory of Sascia...and then again a few days later, professing that they love each other and have failed to stop the coming war. I will say, the book does start a bit slow, but once you hit the 40-50% mark the action really starts to pick up, and the slower beginning is integral to setting the stage for the later interconnected parts.
Sascia, who loves the Dark and doesn't want to see it destroyed and is stubborn to a fault, is the perfect person to try and stop the war. She and Princet Nugau team up to try and stop the coming conflict, but as usual with things like this, when timelines get involved, it's very hard to avoid the inevitable.
Nugau is the child of the Darkworld's queen, a ruthless ruler raised in the tradition of bloodshed, but Nugau themself is less inclined to meet blade with blade. Like Sascia, Nugau does want a solution that doesn't end with the Darkworld and the human world going to war, and while their viewpoints clash at first, Nugau and Sascia actually end up agreeing on a lot of things. Nugau is definitely caught between what they think is right and what the people around them think is right. Nugau's mother wants to retaliate against the humans for their attacks (attacks the humans didn't even fully know were happening, what with the timeline mixups) and many of the other aesin (i.e., Darkworld humanoids) agree with her. But Nugau is determined to find a different path, and together with Sascia and some of Nugau's aesin friends, they're able to at least pull some other people to their side.
I would say the overarching theme of this book is choosing peace even when violence is easier. Both humans and aesin are inclined to reach for a weapon when a portal opens up into their worlds. There may be some peacekeepers on both sides, but those in power prefer war. It's easier, and it's profitable. But Sascia and Nugau again and again choose kindness and peace, often even when they're in direct danger themselves. It's often risky, and sometimes they mess up, but overarchingly they strive for a solution that sheds no blood.
