Book Review – The Button Girl by Sally Apokedak

This is a decent YA fantasy novel where Repentance Atwater decides to choose slavery over watching her and her family continue the cycle of birthing children to eventually give over to the rulers as slaves. The broader world unfolds some as we follow the exploits of our main character and it seems like the world is build on the backs of slaves and slave economy in the world of kings and kingdoms. Atwater finds herself in the very halls of the king as his concubine but something is amiss and what she has learned about history doesn’t quite match up with the older man who won’t take his privilege with her. The king educates her and she finds herself in the midst of a regicide plot involving the prince.

As a character Repentance is fairly likable. Her plan involves a lot of naivete which matches her starting character. It wasn’t overall clear if her purpose involved finding her stolen brothers or to be subject to slavery to break the cycle of children production for the slavers. Her relationship with the one who she refuses to marry, Sober Marsh, adds to her naivete as she essentially condemns him to her fate as well. As we are not told if she has a plan or Sober deserves the same fate, this doesn’t exactly endear us to her right away. It is possible I don’t know young adult girls enough but her character seems to flip-flop between weepy damsel who believes all hope is lost from the get-go to being insolent and headstrong. This doesn’t go towards a lot of character growth and her relationships she forms and the people she interacts with tend to fluctuate between these two character traits. I also tend not to buy her change in feelings towards another character and it seems more like a switch that’s flipped and that same switch seems to be flipped too quickly in that character.

The setting and the plot offer a lot to explore. Not everything is revealed and outside this one kingdom a lot is kept out of view to focus in on Repentance’s world. There are mentions of other kingdoms and interestingly enough there is a mention of a type of God and it would have been nice to have found more details about this and whether Repentance follows Him or if it’s just engrained in her and other slaves due to propaganda. How people are named as well seems to indicate there is something to that as well – at least for the slaves. There are other parts of the setting which aren’t quite clear enough including different types of materials used in what appears to be a ice-centric kingdom she lives in or one in which elements can be controlled in some fashion. The plot kept me interested although it does take a good amount of the book to really get going. The bigger plot tends to be considered by Repentance with some leaps in logic to stop the bad guy from the bad guy plot. It concludes well and I enjoyed my reading experience with the story.

Just as a side note, I have the original cover rather than the updated one and I would say both don’t really fit with the tone of the book but that is a minor grievance.