Skyshade

“As much as she wanted to hate him, as much as she wished her hatred of him would stick, take root in her bones and overgrow like a neglected garden, he knew her. He really knew her.”

Alex Aster’s writing style makes extensive use of repetition. Throughout the novel, the author often echoes the same idea in a slightly different way. In this passage, the similar phrases “As much as she wanted to hate him” and “as much as she wished her hatred of him would stick” as well as “he knew her” and “He really knew her” emphasize Isla’s complicated feelings toward Grim at the beginning of the story. The simile comparing Isla’s hatred to “a neglected garden” expresses Isla’s awareness that there is something beautiful about their love even though she would prefer to forget this.

“Ash stuck to every surface of the landscape, a layer of poisoned snow. Houses lay in charred piles like pyre wood. Nothing stood tall anymore. The village had been brought to its knees. Her cry cut through the silence like a scythe. Bodies big and small curled against the ground and hardened into rubble.”

Aster paints a vivid picture of the devastated village through descriptions like “poisoned snow” and “charred piles.” The observation that the village “had been brought to its knees” uses personification to give the setting a mood of utter defeat and desolation. In addition, a simile likens Isla’s cry of despair to a scythe. In art and literature, death is often depicted as a figure wielding a scythe, so this