the book is funny and has an intriguing premise which i appreciated, but the ending felt very rushed and left a lot of threads untied for me. the villains felt two-dimensional, like they were just villains for the sake of the plot. then again, maybe i’m expecting too much from a book that’s targeted at younger readers.

i’m also disappointed with the portrayal of the secondary antagonists as uncivilised, barbarian cannibals. that blatantly colonialist rhetoric felt very out of place in a book with generally progressive, anti-fascist themes.

the book also could’ve used better editing. i noticed that characters had names swapped or changed out midway and there were quite a few punctuation errors.