Elysium Girls
Summary:
In this sweeping Dust Bowl-inspired fantasy, a ten-year game between Life and Death pits the walled Oklahoma city of Elysium-including a girl gang of witches and a demon who longs for humanity-against the supernatural in order to judge mankind.
When Sal is named Successor to Mother Morevna, a powerful witch and leader of Elysium, she jumps at the chance to prove herself to the town. Ever since she was a kid, Sal has been plagued by false visions of rain, and though people think she's a liar, she knows she's a leader. Even the arrival of enigmatic outsider Asa-a human-obsessed demon in disguise-doesn't shake her confidence in her ability. Until a terrible mistake results in both Sal and Asa's exile into the Desert of Dust and Steel.
Face-to-face with a brutal, unforgiving landscape, Sal and Asa join a gang of girls headed by another Elysium exile-and young witch herself-Olivia Rosales. In order to atone for their mistake, they create a cavalry of magic powered, scrap metal horses to save Elysium from the coming apocalypse. But Sal, Asa, and Olivia must do more than simply tip the scales in Elysium's favor-only by reinventing the rules can they beat the Life and Death at their own game. (Summary and cover courtesy of goodreads.com)
Review:
This book had pacing issues and that is the main reason I really struggled with it. The concept? Amazing. Diverse, unique characters thrown into crazy circumstances and play be the rules of a game they actually don’t have all the details to sounds like it should be a winner. The first third of the book I picked up, put down, picked up, put down etc. Ultimately, I did decide I wanted to find out what happened, but it took two re-requests from the library to get back around to it.
The last third of the book was absolutely action-packed and made it worth reading, but I the setup just took too long. There were also so many reveals and twists in the last two chapters that it was almost hard to keep track of. I love the premise and wanted to love this read, but I think it could have done better with another edit to keep the pacing managed.
Warning: Contains repeated violence.
Rating: 2 stars!
Who should read it? Fans of the premise who are willing to be a little patient with the timing.