Book Review, Fairy Loot, Fantasy, YA

Given to the Sea by Mindy McGinnis 

Given to the sea was the book I got from the April FairyLoot, the concept of the book seemed interesting but I was still unsure if I would enjoy the book. The book is set in a world where a girl from a certain bloodline is sacrificed to the sea, to stop the sea from sending a wave that would destroy the land. Khosa is the ‘Given’ her purpose in life is to be breed givening the world the next ‘Given’ before she dances to her death in the sea. The book also follows Prince Vincent third inline to a throne he doesn’t want. Dara and Donil the last of their people adopted into the Royal family but not accepted by its people. Finally Witt the leader of thr Pietra people that will do what he must to save his people from a land that doesn’t prosper.

The book is structured that a chapter follows either Khosa, Vincent, Dara and Witt you get to see the world from each of there views. You can see the motivation for certain actions, and a nice view it to what they think of the other characters. This also made me change my opinions of the characters through out the book. Although I never really liked Dara I wanted to as she is this  great warrior woman but I couldn’t get past her attitude. 

To be honest I wasn’t emotionally invested into any of the characters, the story gripped me and the characters where interesting but by the end of the book something had happened that changed my opinion of the characters. One of the reasons is that character are neither good or bad they are people with views steeped in history trying their best in a bad situation . 

One of the reason the story gripped me is the element of human sacrifice, how Society doesn’t question that a women has give birth to a daughter she never gets to watch her daughter grow up but no she will die. I think it also scary that human sacrifice still goes on today, that even in a modern world people are still strongly influenced by the past.

I look forward to seeing what happens in this series as it seems their world is nearing to the end and that impending doom makes for very interesting stories. The story was also beautiful written make it easy to read which I always appreciate.

I give this story 4 out of 5 

🤓🤓🤓🤓

Thanks for reading.

Gem x