With their lives destabilized by war and a devastating sickness spreading, Sabel, who has \u201cwood-coloured\u201d skin, sits down with her family to share a last meal before leaving home. But instead of the family leaving together, Appa and Amma send the kids\u2014Sabel, Reya, Theri, Verlane, and S\u2019Jin\u2014off on their own. After a turbulent and disorienting trek, they find themselves at an abandoned school on an island in another country with children from other unnamed \u201cfalling-down\u201d places. These young people are called sugar diamonds; their powerful, \u201chigh-life\u201d parents have used their connections\u2014and lots of ghee, the new currency\u2014to get them to some sort of safety. Now they\u2019re to bide their time until a ship arrives in 10 days. But with circumstances becoming increasingly suspicious, it\u2019s hard for them not to question whether their caretakers have other motivations. Boyagoda\u2019s young readers\u2019 debut explores themes of hope, belief, and resiliency. As details about the unraveling state of society are revealed, the story raises questions about and comparisons to past and present conflicts. Sabel is at the center of the narrative, but readers also hear directly from supporting characters\u2014such as red-haired, green-eyed Chynoweth, a bookseller\u2019s daughter who\u2019s coerced into overseeing the children, and black-skinned Jaka, the eldest grandson of the \u201cwar-making man everyone called The General\u201d\u2014who nevertheless feel underdeveloped.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
With their lives destabilized by war and a devastating sickness spreading, Sabel, who has \u201cwood-coloured\u201d skin, sits down with her family to share a last meal before leaving home. But instead of the family leaving together, Appa and Amma send the kids\u2014Sabel, Reya, Theri, Verlane, and S\u2019Jin\u2014off on their own. After a turbulent and disorienting […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":1844,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1843","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1843"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1843"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1843\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1844"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}