Review--Sky of Seven Colors

Title: Sky of Seven Colors

Author: Rachelle Nelson

Genre: YA Fantasy, Christian Fantasy

Rating: 4/5 stars

FTC Disclosure: I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. I was not required to leave a positive review. All thoughts and opinions expressed herein are entirely my own.

Overview: A most unusual story… I don’t know what I expected from this book, but it definitely wasn’t what I got. This is a portal fantasy telling of a world so different from ours and yet so real, weaving a thread of hope into the dark tapestry of despair. It’s strange, yet somehow familiar.

In other words, I quite liked it.

Characters: Meg is a great protagonist, literally dragged into an adventure that she wants no part of. She handles everything with maturity (so much so that it’s hard to remember she’s only seventeen), but she’s far from perfect, having plenty of room to grow throughout the story. I think we would be friends.

The king is… creepy? That’s not the right word, but it’s the best one I can come up with. I can’t say much else because of spoilers, but suffice it to say that we would most definitely not be friends.

Proce and Von, on the other hand, are fantastic. Their culture is so different from that of humans, and it was fun to see them interacting with Meg and with each other.

Content: The premise of the story is that Meg is taken to the grey earth so she can marry the king—something she definitely does not want to do. That might be disturbing for some readers, so just be warned.

There’s one small, undetailed kiss.

There’s some violence, with one character getting magically killed and another being stabbed. Blood is mentioned, but nothing’s graphic.

Writing: It was so refreshing to read a mainstream YA book not written in first person present! We still have a first-person narrator, but it’s in past tense, and that made me ridiculously happy.

That and other things give Nelson’s style a bit of an older feel. It reminded me of books I read when I was first getting into YA fantasy. I kept getting A Princess of Mars vibes from the book. The story is well-written and definitely engaging; I never wanted to put it down!

Summary: This is not your typical fantasy novel. It’s a unique take on a tale of a captured princess, sprinkled with Christian themes and concluding with a satisfying ending. I would recommend this to fantasy fans aged 15+.