Vaishali • [V.L. Book Reviews] 's Reviews > Ten Thousand Skies Above You

RATING: 4 stars to Ten Thousand Skies Above You! ★ ★ ★ ★

The plot thickens in a colossally orbicular bowl I'm going to call a Multiverse soup with Firebird #2 where dimension travel fiction has uprooted me from my ordinary for a second cycle sequence. So much fun, and the concept persists with no less a generous helping of interest. The stakes become steeper, love is used to leverage twofold, scientific ingenuity continues to be inextricably harmonised with human agenda, surprises travel across worlds, relationships are challenged, conspiratorial collaborations form a new face and Marguerite's love life hypothesis meets contention in newer forms. It's rarely plain-sailing in paradise for this teen. In Marguerite's world, her problems come stacked with the weight of many. Literally. And with the weight of family. And with enemies who want to use them against her. Her parents' cross-travel innovation is proving to be more trouble than it might be worth in pioneering science. Because with the triumph of an empirical breakthrough comes the flaw of misguided human ambition, and those who are closer to tweaking, tinkering and orchestrating their way to unthinkably inappropriate ends are much closer to her than she could ever have thought. And the possible end to countless lives in the process is but dust in between worlds, debris in between dimension. True to from, she's doing her effort best to pick up the pieces, literal and figurative. It's not just a matter of being acquired to weaponise for Marguerite, nor is it just about her Paul becoming the splintered example of what can be done to a soul and an adversary's desire to capitalise on every modern possibility that can come from puppeteering the multiverse. Those are big problems, of course, but it gets much more personal than that when she's exposed to the unchangeable aftermath of her own multiverse faux pa.

The sequel brings us up to speed speedily but like book one it opens up with interesting plot-based action. Ten Thousand Skies Above You skips ahead a few months on and the alternative world jaunt picks up with a new set of challenges our protagonists have to face. But with all the reveals of book one, we get more secrets with book #2. Poor Theo's been hiding health woes, suffering the secret ravages of what was done to him through the manhandling of a multiverse twin. As such, the state of his health is indefinite. He's been distant with the rest of the gang, and it becomes pertinent soon why. I was truly happy to see Theo get some page time to shine since he became such a source of questionability for Marguerite. He needed it, deserved it and supports her endlessly. Paul, is again, consistently AWOL. Like book one, we have a Paul who is mostly absentee amid the story bulk (bar the dimensional others of him we meet), and in that sense, I appreciated the needed collaboration space lent to the real Theo and Marguerite. They were robbed of their chance to really bond over a dimensional journey of their own. But back to Paul? If he's mostly AWOL again come book three, the final partner to the trilogy, I may have to disown him I've decided. I'm going to play devil's advocate and say there may be something that feels a bit too promised about our leading lady artist and her beloved student physicist, and I'm losing confidence that he's the soul mate we're led to believe he is, not because we face different facets to his character (which was necessarily and realistically grounding as Marguerite's often remiss in placing too much stock in her idea of perfect paragon Paul) but because he feels more echo, like a possibility in between worlds as opposed to solid form sans adequate romantic relationship progress. There's something intangible about him, and I'm very curious to see what transpires. I'm analysing the value of activising a 'where is Paul Markov' campaign, however. He completely disarmed me in only the best possible way in A Thousand Pieces of You, but his place in book two felt more redundant. Their relationship is currently in a place of challenge so we'll see how the challenge transpires!

I was prepared to usurp my extraordinary love for Paul moreso with Ten Thousand Skies Above You but I'm shocked to say I might have loved him less. And that statement right there is placing me within the biology of intrinsic uncertainty. Maybe the trilogy closer will conclude with a different kind of ship, or shock us further entirely by introducing a multiverse throuple. I joke, but as it stands I don't know where I stand with this fledgling love triangle that seems to know precisely what it wants but also doesn't. I feel as I if I know every other Paul we meet more than I do Marguerite's actual Paul, which contributes to her protracted love hypothesis and inner struggle to see beyond her made belief system, or perhaps Paul's too issued up to really show up with the fight Marguerite's going to need from him. Where I thought the love triangle was snugly put to bed upon finalising book one, the author draws it back to life again a little bit here, and I had to question whether it was really necessary, unless Claudia Gray has plans, plans she's singularly sidelined us with so far. I was pleasantly curious at the semi-revival since I believed the author might be heading somewhere clever with it for round two, this potentially reasoning why I felt a lack of a developed connection between Paul and Marguerite. We all know who Marguerite believes she's destined to be with but could there be a maybe in that equation, even as adamant as she is in where and with whom her heart currently lies? Of course I want to believe in destined love, but perhaps the author has clandestine goals to maintain the subtle misdirective for reasons she's not willing to disclose just yet. I hope. I pray. I'm at her mercy. We know that Paul and Marguerite have a destined connection across parallel spaces, sparing others where she discovers the lack of him in certain lives, but we needed more relationship development between the two of them in lieu of relying on who he is and has been to her in every other world they encounter. Getting caught up in the semantics of every personality profile of Paul not within parallelism to her assumed beliefs does hurt her general sense of inner solicitude and her lack forethought as a protagonist, and It didn't escape my reader qualms that her belief system pertaining to Paul became the big theme that it didn't quite need to be.

Even though Marguerite's inner conflict over Paul's indivisibility in her life repetitively perpetuates her unease and puts her conviction in him being her fated other deep into question, I do believe Ten Thousand Skies Above You becomes the book by which she meets her biggest learning curve. She really learns the consequences of her actions when she revisits the Russiaverse. Although she has her shortcomings in the way she doesn't make the most out situations and seems delayed in learning lessons most would come to with minutes of contemplation, this instalment really does play to some needed reflection and course change on her part. The book makes a great point of commenting on how arguably no one person should possess such uses of great and grand inventions, when they can even be used by good people misguided by their own humanity, where anybody can and will weaponise their feelings into mass destruction. That the universe we should be concerned with first and only is the one we exist within, not manipulating multiverse strings for schematic modification. One of my major concerns over book one was the autonomous ramifications of body hopping, and while it didn't push forward with every point I wanted it to, it did push forward with others. What this sequel accomplishes really well is coming full circle with the moral aftermath of Marguerite's poor choice making in book one. She tangles with the ethical dilemma of her actions and the unavoidable consequences, which I now realise may have been the author's truest intention with the often debatable choices our heroine made preceding. I love the way each universe leans into and layers the story like a building trifle, whether It's a plot point push, a revelation discovered, relationships in trouble, an inner struggle, we do always learn something from each visited universe. In that sense, there's always a sense of perspective.

The destined concept of universal familiars is a deeply comforting concept, and Gray really digs her pen into this particular theme. There's a beautiful boundary-crossing sentimentalism about it that plays to familial conviction and universal affection that spans any gap between universes. As I'm sure I've likely already voiced, there something very readable about this set of books and I'm having such fun time exploring the author's ultra-fine sense of chicanery. As much as a very desperate part of me was deeply anticipating our heroine to experience the hollows of being an 'imperfect' traveller, I did not expect that adequately dramatic cliffhanger. The sequel's conclusion really came toting the surprise factor. The author plays with some interesting questioning in the curious sense of meditating on who we'd be in worlds existing in ones alongside our own but aren't our own. And the rightness of claiming ownership of every person in existence just because they're yours in another life. Interesting stuff. The series is back for round two and Marguerite is poised to make some hard choices as the people she loves never seem to be immune from the danger that now feels second nature with the open can of worms that spilled the multiverse before them with her parents universe hopping contraption. To kill two birds with a few leaps, she hopes to save both Paul and Theo, and deals with the devil/devils to do it. She has to breach familial boundaries and work against her family and friends in a handful of other parallels to stay the course to her mission. But It's one thing to choose against ill schemes and wily will, quite another for your hand to be forced by them anyway. And this is where Marguerite finds herself, cooperating with her enemy, sabotaging her dimensional hearth and dangling by the threads of scientific manipulation while roped into the calculating machinations of the tech entrepreneur that is Wyatt Conley who continues to use the love between the Caine family and their student researchers like tokens, bribes and offers they can't refuse.

She's a hot commodity with a special skill and Conley will stretch lengths to have her, or worse. But if Marguerite's being honest with herself, she's quite sick of his face by this point. Nobody can outrun their problems though, since each of them can be found and leveraged in any dimension, in creatively cruel ways, or loved ones can even wear the faces of their other selves. Having come away with more knowledge of the multiverse as well as the loved ones that dwell in each one, Marguerite's learnings have taught her how precious her family is and how love can carry a familiar faith within each world. The consequences of scientific ingenuity and creativity are twisted to meet the needs of a high powered wrongdoer with dimension-spanning plans. Book two continues to lean into alternate world visits, which services the inner struggle of each character. The plotline is an ever-moving, ever-changing hook and I loved the alternate world settings we're dropped into with the sequel; a grim, war-ravaged San Francisco where her parents are using their Firebird research to turn the tide and maneuver a war to their favour; one that manifests a completely different side of Conley, apprehended by an organised crime syndicate where an unsuspecting Paul leads a very different life than any she could have ever imagined for him; back in the royal life of a duchess Marguerite but in the richest, ritziest old age Paris which isn't the safe, recuperative hideaway she thought it would be; a current day NYC that challenges her future, dreams and her relationship with Paul; and a severely undressed corporate culture of skyscrapers built upon skyscrapers where industrialism wears no shade but the truth - a layered society built to trade human for a consumer, where not even the sky can be seen from the lowest level of the earth. The Caine family are in a messy multiverse situation and Marguerite's the one to bulldoze ahead and press her way forward for a solution. The plot does lose itself to romantic speculation and belief perplexities more often than not but I was always eager for the readable plotline. There's more action, well-placed interludes of suspense and surprising turns. As with A Thousand Pieces of You some angles are decidedly guessable and some really aren't, though I'm hoping that the trilogy closer comes toting its weight in multiverse brilliance. For now, I'm trying not to worry over the fact Theo doesn't even get a courtesy mention in the blurb for Firebird #3

Content Warning/Listing: An on page seizure. General warnings for violence, injury and blood. Describes war and it's consequences (mentions the death of young children). Kidnapping/violence. Shootings. Detailed description of injury.


EXTRA THOUGHTS:
1) I would have really appreciated seeing Paul and Marguerite's relationship blossom on page rather than having it shared retrospectively and just believed in for the sake of supporting the fated perspective. And while I love the concept of transcendental love to lean on it without the accompanying development feels a bit untrustworthy.

2) Marguerite is frustratingly represented at times. I found myself troubled by her assumption that every Paul fundamentally, essentially and elementally is the same as her own and would hence always act and behave like the Paul in every universe would. The concept of an essential sameness is very realistic and consistently believable with an idea such as this but that doesn't seem each one his own person with his own life. It's like she's blinded by her perceptions and fails to want to see the nuance in character and how people travel differently and circumstantially in different lives. For an artist she should be able to desseminate the more of the nuance in people, surely? She may have gathered insight through the many dimensions she's visited but she doesn't take anything else into account with the exception of who Paul is at his core. Good people do bad things. It does irritate the nerves when she continually shares in the idea of their interchangeability, but like I mentioned in my main review, she does actually make a turnaround. Just because Paul might be a certain kind of Paul in most universes, one so remarkably, familiarly similar, it doesn't quite mean that speaks true to each one. I was glad Theo gave her a bit of a truth talking so she could see the light and question the error of her ways.

​3) Also, Josie’s been conspicuously absent through the books, or more covert a character which I’m finding curious so I’m wondering if the final book will have her come through with some surprises of her own (or if she’ll be used some way). Or maybe I’m letting the dramatic nature of teen fantasy get the best of me. See we shall!

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