We've got your back. With the Tough-O-Meter, you'll know whether to bring extra layers or Swiss army knives as you summit the literary mountain. (10 = Toughest)
(3) Base Camp
Our main viewpoint characters are all young folks (Hahp is eleven and Sadima is seventeen for most of the story), so we're not seeing brain-twistingly complicated phrases or concepts in this book. But there is a lot of violence and a whole lot of stuff that simply does not make sense. Why does Hahp have to learn to send his thoughts into different parts of his body? Why is Sadima helpless while watching Somiss exploit and use Franklin? Who thinks starving little boys in order to teach them magic could possibly be a good idea?
Between the book's mysteries and the events that are just hard to wrap your head around (assuming you're a moral person), this book's no walk in the park. But since the narrators' language makes everything easy to understand as it happens, you'll have front row seats to the atrocities and other weird crap that happens throughout. Um, yay?