Dark of the West by Joanna Hathaway

I rated Dark of the West 3.5/5 stars; as one of my most highly anticipated releases of the year, it fell flat in some regards but exceeded my expectations in others.

Dark of the West is set in a world at war. Athan, the son of a military commander, has been surrounded by and trained for war his whole life, along with his cruel older brothers. Princess Aurelia of Etania, on the other hand, has been raised in a palace. Despite being a princess, she is largely ignored and considered irrelevant since her older brother Renisala will be the one to take the throne. Athan and Aurelia meet following a tragedy in Athan's life. Athan is ordered to spy on Aurelia and her family, but, unbeknownst to Athan's father, Aurelia and Athan begin to fall in love amidst impending war.

My favorite part about Dark of the West was the characters. I loved Athan and Aurelia as individuals and as two people in a relationship. I think their relationship was so natural and beautiful, the complete antithesis to insta-love. They started out being friends, which I don't think we see enough of in YA Fantasy, and as their feelings for each other deepened, I never got the impression that their relationship was being hurried along to further the plot. For a lot of the book, they seemed to hover in this territory of maybe not-quite-loving each other, but still caring about each other deeply, which I think is so realistic for two teenagers who haven't known each other for very long.

As individuals, I think I liked Athan best. Unlike a lot of male characters in fantasy, he wasn't afraid to express and properly experience his emotions. Of course he's scared, of course he's sad, and of course he has conflicted feelings towards almost everyone in his life. But he has such a strong grasp on those emotions that instead of acting out senselessly, he thinks through them and recognizes what they are, which, in my opinion, is a truer definition of strength than if he were to just bottle everything up.

I have to admit, I didn't enjoy Aurelia as much as a character. She seemed to let things happen to her throughout a lot of the book, while not actually doing anything about them. She's a princess; while she doesn't have as much power as her brother, who is set to inherit the throne, she still must have some power and must be able to have some control over her fate.

The other characters, particularly Athan's brothers, were so interesting to read about from Athan's point of view, because even though they were objectively bad people (one of them in particular), they were Athan's brothers, and he cared about them in his own way. I also liked the hinted shared background between Athan's father and Ali's mother. I'm really interested to find out more about that. Perhaps in a novella?

The setting was another thing I really liked. While I normally like a lot of magic in fantasy novels, I think the incorporation of technology was really unique. This world has cars, planes, gramophones, and other technology that seems better suited to a novel set in the early 1900s. While Athan's chapters were mostly set in a world filled with dangerous technology, Ali's surroundings were more typical of an average fantasy novel. I think that if any book could perfectly reconcile these differing aspects of fantasy, it would be Dark of the West.

However, one thing I couldn't understand was why some aspects of the world were so outdated compared to all the technology. Aurelia's mother is planning to marry her to a man in his thirties; shouldn't arranged marriages be a thing of the past? There are superstitions about whether or not a true ruler of Etania can be murdered; in a world with so many advancements, shouldn't superstitions be less commonly accepted?

The plot caused some...issues for me. I couldn't figure out who was allied with whom, who was pretending to be allied but was really enemies with which country, and so on. The alliances were so convoluted that I couldn't figure out anything about them. I also didn't like how North and South were used so frequently to differentiate between groups. Obviously, this is all taking place on one continent, but the entirety of the North was not one allied unit, and the same goes for the South. One person does not rule over the entirety of the North or the South, and the people from each half do not share defining characteristics, like appearance or language. The only clear distinction I could really make was that the North has monarchies, while the South does not. This made understanding the political aspect behind the plot very difficult.

So, while I definitely felt that Dark of the West had some flaws, the writing was absolutely beautiful, the romance was believable and SO cute, and the main characters were just so genuinely goodhearted.