Ah, so that's what it feels like to find a book that was written specifically for me.

I'll preface this with the fact that I did see the movie (god, has it really been five years already?) before reading the book, but my fears of being spoiled ended up being unfounded because beyond the setting and loose cast of characters, there's barely any crossover between the two. They may as well be two separate works of fiction, but luckily for me I ended up loving both of them.

This was a weird book, but not in a way that left me frustrated. The setting itself is a central mystery, but several other interrelated mysteries swirl around it, and not everything (not even the majority) is answered. But because everything is relayed second-hand through - honestly - one of the most interesting protagonists I've ever read, you're so detached from things that it's not really about what's happening, but more about how people react in these situations. Yes there's dramatic action and tension and conflict, but there's also this lens of separation that obscures and lessens everything. Like you're observing a life-or-death struggle of some small creatures under the surface of a pond.

It's also an intensely lonely book. There are long stretches of exposition, and even when the multiple consecutive scenes depicting the protagonist alone are interspersed with her flashbacks, there just is not a lot of dialogue going on here. Normally that's a recipe for waning interest for me, but I was fully engaged here throughout. She had such an interesting mind and personality to delve into that I felt like I was learning about an actual person.

The worldbuilding is also fantastic and is so rich for additional stories to tell. I don't usually go for series, but I'm really gonna try to finish this trilogy if the first book has me so enamored.

This is one of those books where it's kind of frustrating to write a review because I know I'm not doing it justice. I just know that I've never read anything like this and I'm craving more.