by Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner

Nimh has been her people’s goddess for 10 years, having been chosen as such when she was a girl. Since then, she has lived at the temple, been guarded closely and not been allowed to touch anyone. Though she can work Magic, her particular power as a goddess has yet to manifest itself, which is a concern for many because most previous gods or goddesses of the people showed theirs within a few years of being chosen.

North is the prince in his land, a floating kingdom that’s been in the sky for a thousand years. The knowledge of exactly how the engines work that keep it in the clouds has been lost, but it’s not a concern — except that some people, including North, believe the city is starting to sink. His proposal that he be allowed to work on his glider and find a way to use it to go down to the surface of the planet, where the city and the engines were first created, and return up to the city seems like a wise one to save his people, but his parents won’t allow it. No one has been down to the surface, and everyone knows it’s uninhabited and dangerous.

But North soon finds himself stranded down below, and he learns that not only is it inhabited, but the civilization is much different from his: for one thing, the people there believe in magic. And the girl who finds him is not only a practitioner of so-called magic, but the people believe she’s a living goddess, descended from gods in the sky.

Both Nimh and North are facing challenges and trying to figure out how to help their people. But their destinies are intertwined much more than they could have imagined. And while they may have feelings for each other, it is impossible for them to be together.

I’ve loved Amie Kaufman’s books she’s written with Jay Kristoff (Illuminae Files and Aurora Cycle), which are super-fun, wild rides in space, and one she has written with Meagan Spooner, These Broken Stars, which starts in space but ends up down on a planet and has a different kind of feel entirely. Kaufman and Spooner here create a world that’s not set in space except that technology launched one set of people up into the sky. Most of this book is set on the surface of the planet, where life is somewhat primitive, lacking in technology, and people use magic. This is very much a story about two young people finding themselves, making choices about how to use their skills, and having to make hard decisions about what they want for themselves when those desires conflict with “the greater good.” Nimh and North are strong characters, and they’re facing some impossible choices. I just wanted them to be happy and be able to be in love. The book introduces a villain who really is terrifying and powerful, so the conflict and tension ratchets up pretty high. Now, again, to wait for the second book to see where the authors take the story.

Rated: Moderate. There are very few instances of profanity, and those are mild. Sexual content includes references to characters having made out but nothing “live” in the story, and a character has a child out of wedlock. One of the two main characters comes from a society where long-term committed partnerships can be either pairings between two people or among three people. His parents are women, and he had considered the possibility of entering into a romantic long-term partnership with a best male friend and female friend. Violence includes stabbing, references to some people having been “gutted” and hung from trees, and other deaths and peril.