As princess of the island kingdom Visidia, Amora Montara has spent her entire life training to be High Animancer – the master of souls. The rest of the realm can choose their magic, but for Amora, it’s never been a choice. To secure her place as heir to the throne, she must prove her mastery of the monarchy’s dangerous soul magic.
When her demonstration goes awry, Amora is forced to flee. She strikes a deal with Bastian, a mysterious pirate: he’ll help her prove she’s fit to rule, if she’ll help him reclaim his stolen magic.
But sailing the kingdom holds more wonder – and more peril – than Amora anticipated. A destructive new magic is on the rise, and if Amora is to conquer it, she’ll need to face legendary monsters, cross paths with vengeful mermaids, and deal with a stow-away she never expected… or risk the fate of Visidia and lose the crown forever.
Title : All the Stars and Teeth
Author : Adalyn Grace
Series : All the Stars and Teeth #1
Format : Paperback
Page Count : 416
Genre : YA Fantasy
Publisher : Titan Books
Release Date : August 4, 2020
Reviewer : Micky
Rating : ★ ★ ★ ★ .5
Micky’s 4.5 star review
This book wowed me on a number of fronts, I found it a totally unexpected YA fantasy with very little resting on predictable tropes or plot directions. I thought Adalyn Grace was a fresh voice and I didn’t realise how much I was ready for that kind of palate cleansing until I read this.
ALL THE STARS AND TEETH was unapologetically gory and blood-thirsty in parts, there was no smoothing of the gritty and I embraced this world masked by secrets. The protagonist, Amora was the most un-princessy princess I’ve come across in a while. She was fiesty, uninterested in appearances, she wanted to be a fighter and a sailor. She also had serious wanderlust.
The start of the story had her world come crashing down and everything unleased from there, dark magic, sea monsters, a pirate, a mermaid and some very shady characters. The characters that became the crew of Keel Haul found their way into my heart, so that by the end I was so fond of them. Alongside Amora, Bastian was a great character, his secrets and magic were fascinating. The low-level romance was pitched just right.
One of the best things about this book was the feminist tone throughout. I’m about to drop a mild SPOILER in here, so skim on if you don’t want to read that. In the story, Amora had a very obvious period accident on her clothing…we do not read these things enough in books and I commend Adalyn Grace for including this and also for how she wrote the guys’ reactions to it. Everything about Amora was generally feminist and the male characters in the Keel Haul crew had feminist undertones too.
This gorgeous cover contained a great debut and series starter all rolled into one. I simply cannot wait to be back with these characters and read on with the series. This is definitely a 2020 read I’m going to remember.
Thank you to Titan Books for the review copy.
A Take from Two Cities 