 Hello, my darling extraterrestrials. I am Kim. This is Dustmotes and Velikor. And before we get into it, I just wanted to give a quick shout out to all of my new subscribers. You are out of this world. That pun was horrible. I apologize. But seriously, I have reached my goal. I have activated less hideous URL mode. And my Instagram bio is slightly less embarrassing. And it's all thanks to you guys. Okay, moving along. Today we are talking about Sky in the Deep by Adrienne Young. The main character's name is spelled E-E-L-Y-N. Is it Ellen? Is it Alen? You choose. A young Viking woman named Alen. Let's go with that. Crosses swords with her brother in the heat of battle five years after his death. To keep his secret, he takes her captive, but she does not go quietly. Seething from his betrayal, she plans her escape. But her plans are interrupted by an enemy thought to be Mith, the same tribe that killed her mother. She and her captor, a young man named Fisk, her brother's new blood brother, have to find a way to bring together their feuding clans and forge a new way of life from the ashes of the old. Yes, I did rip that description directly from my June wrap up video. I have a small amount of shame, but that much. This book is very character driven. It's nice to see a female character so trapped by her own pride. A lot of lady characters are very malleable, willing to feign subservience and bide their time until they can get their own back later. Not Alen. Her pride is the cornerstone of her personality, the bedrock of who she is. Her honor is the most important thing to her, and in her eyes and in the eyes of her clan, that gets stripped when she becomes a slave. It is a bitter pill when Fisk buys her for the same amount that just last week she paid for a goat. She also has literally the worst emotional intelligence, full stop. Other people are almost constantly doing her emotions for her. She's just so wrapped up in how things should be that she doesn't see how they are. If we're doing a forest versus trees analogy, she's definitely trees. And that's great. Give me more women who bite the hand that feeds them. And in this particular case, I do mean that metaphorically, but with this book you really never know. Content warning. There are several instances of attempted sexual assault in this book, and one instance of eye mutilation. Just please be careful with yourself. I seriously recommend DoesTheDogDie.com. They track a lot of triggering things, so check it out. They mostly do movies and TV, but some books too. Okay, after that content warning, now I have to talk about the violence. Most of the time this book is violent in the way a lot of YA books are violent. Cool fight scenes, blood curdling battle cries, battle strategies. There is one scene in the middle of this book that is the most visceral, blood curdling violence that I have ever read, and I've read Game of Thrones. This scene comes as a bit of a surprise, so I just wanted to warn everybody. But it's really character driven too. We get to learn a lot about Eileen and how far she'll go. I personally think that she went into a sort of fugue state while it was happening, and then she went a little berserk. And I mean that in the most Viking sense of the word. And in retrospect, it was super cool to see a lady Viking go berserk. On the other hand, it did make me a little nauseous. So take that as you will. At its heart, this story is about looking past the differences we see in ourselves and focusing on the similarities. It's about being a transplant in a foreign culture and bridging the gaps between communities and learning to be open to the other side of the story. It's also about revenge, but that's pretty secondary. What are you reading these days? Have you read this one yet? It came out April 24th, which was actually not that long ago. I found it in the new section at my local library. I'm such a library nerd. Seriously, come talk to me about books. And don't forget to subscribe. Aviento!