What a beautifully written book! It feels like you are travelling to a new world, one that has 2 characters that entwine along the way. 2 very different worlds, Mayken on the shop called the Batavia, and Gil living on an island where there is history of Batavia. A key item in the book brings the 2 characters together across history, space and time. The author does an excellent job of building characters and their histories and the settings are easy to picture due to the detail included. The author has researched the background for the book well and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. I found this was a book that kept me reading, I like that the chapters alternate between Mayken and Gil, this makes it very easy to follow without jumping round a lot. It is not normally the kind of book that I would usually read, but I like reading books that are outside of my usual picks to have a bit of a change. I think Jess has done a great job with this book, read it, you will not be disappointed.