Review | Let the Sky Fall by Shannon Messenger

This is one of those books that I wanted to, really wanted to love, especially after all the amazing reviews I read on it. But isn't usually how it goes? Instead, I barely liked Let the Sky Fall and was sorely disappointed in it's lack of originality despite having a unique paranormal concept.

The book begins with Vane, who I disliked the most.  I would have liked him if he wasn't such a complainer. And if his "love" for Audra, his guardian and now trainer, had been expressed beyond wanting to rip her clothes off (and loosen her tight braid.) Unfortunately, when he finds out that he is the last Windwalker of his kind, he constantly whines about all the training he has to go through. Ugh. He just annoyed me and I wanted to smack him. Repeatedly.

Audra is kind of kickass. But she's also so disconnected that I wasn't able to like her much either. She's built this wall around herself that doesn't allow her to want to feel anything and that caused me not to even feel any attachment towards her character. The only time I felt any sympathy towards her were her encounters with her mother, who was just plain cruel, but otherwise I didn't care much for her either.

Surely I wouldn't have been able to look past two characters that I felt iffy about, but I decided to push myself through the book. I soon realized that the fate of our planet was once again at the hands of a pair of teenage lovers. And while I don't always mind this, I felt that in Let the Sky Fall it just didn't make sense. Since Vane is a special person (the last of his kind, remember?) I would think he would need more protection than just one teenage girl. But no, because apparently extra guardians couldn't be spared to stop the evil guy and he manages to get to them anyways. Instead, when the final battle came, it felt rushed and was predictable because the entire book focused on this weird relationship between the two and the training they did.

The only thing that I actually enjoyed about the book was the mythical aspect of it. The book is based on pretty much Vane finding out that he is a Windwalker, a sylph, which means (according to Wikipedia) that he is an invisible being of air. Of course, he's not invisible, but he's also not human and idea of this was completely awesome. I wish it could have been executed better, with more likable characters, but unfortunately for me this was not the case. Let the Sky Fall, turned out to be not for me after all.