Thank you so freaking much to Fantastic Flying Book Club for having me on this blog tour!! Ugh so excited for this one, and I get to share a dream cast for this too! Be sure to click on the banner for the rest of the blog tour schedule, and to see what other tours are coming up!

From the author of The Demon Race comes a YA dark fantasy series inspired by Inuit mythology.

In the heart of the frigid North, there lives a demon known as the Face Stealer. Eyes, nose, mouth—nothing and no one is safe. Once he returns to his lair, or wherever it is he dwells, no one ever sees those faces again.

When tragedy strikes, Apaay embarks on a perilous journey to find her sister’s face—yet becomes trapped in a labyrinth ruled by a sinister girl named Yuki. The girl offers Apaay a deal: find her sister’s face hidden within the labyrinth, and she will be set free. But the labyrinth, and those who inhabit it, is not as it seems. Especially Numiak: darkly beautiful, powerful, whose motives are not yet clear.

With time slipping, Apaay is determined to escape the deadly labyrinth with her sister’s face in hand. But in Yuki’s harsh world, Apaay will need all her strength to survive.

Yuki only plays the games she wins.

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Alexandria Warwick is the #1 fan of Avatar: The Last Airbender. She is the author of The Demon Race and the upcoming North series.

Disclaimer: I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own. Thank you to Fantastic Flying Book Club, Netgalley, and Wolf Publishing for this free copy. All quotes in this review are taken from the Advanced Reader Copy and may change in final publication.

Knowing that Warwick is a huge fan of Avatar: The Last Airbender and then reading this synopsis and novel, it just makes it that much more cool. There’s a character in the series – the character that I have a gif of above – called Koh, the Face Stealer. If Koh sees you make any facial expression in front of him, he will steal your face. Clearly, he has a lot of faces to shuffle through when we finally get to meet him face to face… yes I said that, with Aang, our current Avatar. I don’t know how Aang was able to keep a neutral face the entire time during his conversation with Koh, but he does, and he gets to keep his face.

No, this isn’t a spoiler. ATLA has been out for years and it’s not crucial to the main plot. Just saying.

Now anyway, I had no idea that the story of a face stealer was inspired by Inuit mythology, and when I saw that this book was inspired by such (not just the face stealer but in general), I was so excited to read it. I’m not sure if Warwick has Inuit in her, and I’m not the right person to know whether or not this book did the Inuit culture justice, so I will say that from my standpoint, I did enjoy this novel. I’m glad that there’s going to be more books in this series, because I feel like there can be so much more involved in this world and there could be more inspirations from Inuit mythology that could come into play in here.

And come on, Yuki needs to be involved in the rest of the series, don’t you think? I love me a sinister little bad girl that gives our MC Apaaya some crazy vibes.

Again, I’m so glad that this tour has an official dream cast involved, as sometimes we don’t get to see what the author has in their mind when they wrote their characters. I have different people in mind when I did mine, which will usually happen and nothing’s wrong with that! I hope you enjoy who I picked and I’d love to see who you have in mind for the characters.

I also aged up Yuki’s face claim a bit from what Warwick has.

Oh my gosh, I’m so glad that I had an opportunity to read this novel. It was insane, and yes apparently that’s my new word to say honestly but yes it’s so true. I loved it so much, and I am curious to see how the sequel plays out. I hope you enjoyed this post and I appreciate you all for staying with me on this tour!