Assassin of Reality

A Novel (Vita Nostra, Book 2)

By: Marina Dyachenko, Sergey Dyachenko

Narrated by: Jessica Ball

Length: 10 hrs and 14 mins

Publisher's summary

The eagerly anticipated sequel to the highly acclaimed Vita Nostra takes listeners to the next stage in Sasha Samokhina’s journey in a richly imagined world of dark academia in which grammar is magic—and not all magic is good.

In Vita Nostra, Sasha Samokhina, a third-year student at the Institute of Special Technologies, was in the middle of taking the final exam that would transform her into a part of the Great Speech. After defying her teachers’ expectations, Sasha emerges from the exam as Password, a unique and powerful part of speech. Accomplished and ready to embrace her new role, she soon learns her powers threaten the old world, and despite her hard work, Sasha is set to fail.

However, Farit Kozhennikov, Sasha’s dark mentor, finds a way to bring her out of the oblivion and back to the Institute for his own selfish purposes. Subsequently, Sasha must correct her mistakes before she is allowed to graduate and is forced to do what few are asked and even less achieve: to succeed and reverberate—becoming a part of the Great Speech and being one of the special few who dictate reality. If she fails, she faces a fate far worse than death: the choice is hers.

Years have passed around the Institute—and the numerous realities that have spread from Sasha’s first failure—but it is only her fourth year of learning what role she will play in shaping the world. Her teachers despise and fear her, her classmates distrust her, and a growing love—for a young pilot with no affiliation to the school—is fraught because a relationship means leverage, and Farit won’t hesitate to use it against her.

Planes crash all the time. Which means Sasha needs to rewrite the world so that can’t happen...or fail for good.

©2023 Marina Dyachenko and Sergey Dyachenko (P)2023 HarperCollins Publishers

Waited for years, and doesn’t let down.

This book is amazing, and does something I find many other books struggle with. It takes the fascinating but mysterious and ambiguous start from Vita Nostra, and condenses it into a direct and compelling narrative without sacrificing anything about what make Vita Nostra unique.

This was a letdown...

And that's not surprising, really. Vita Nostra was so stunningly original, and such a convincing portrayal of what a superhuman consciousness might look like -- there was just nowhere to go except down. I was honestly perplexed when I realized Vita Nostra had a sequel at all -- it had such a satisfying ending, and Sasha seemed to have completely transcended her humanity and passed beyond anything we human readers could understand or relate to. How could there possibly be a sequel after that?

And yet, here Sasha is, back in her human skin, dealing with mostly human problems. There's still psychedelic schoolwork and the occasional glimpse of higher reality, but there no longer seems to be much point or direction to it. The first book had an excellent plot structure, where all the confusing and seemingly random details actually led up to Sasha's moment of transcendence and helped us understand her transformation. Every detail had been there for a reason. It was honestly a masterpiece of "show, don't tell," and managed to pull off the tremendous feat of obliquely showing us a completely alien intelligence. But, alas, this sequel seems to mostly wander in repetitive circles and never get anywhere. Gone is the sense of direction from book 1. Even the ending was unsatisfyingly ambiguous. Is this because the story is intended to continue into a third book? If it is, then, again, where could it possibly go? Why does it need to?

I would say that this felt like very high-quality fanfiction. It's not a bad story per se. It's well written, and it even recaptures some of the spark and spirit of the original, but it is still completely, utterly superfluous. The internal momentum of the story had already been exhausted in book 1. Book 2 is by no means bad, but I still really wish I hadn't read it.

Rambles a bit towards a rushed ending

I enjoyed the book, but felt that it rambled a bit too much. I got to the end and was like "ummm did I accidentally skip a chapter?"

Still recommend, but sadly did not meet expectations.

The narrator totally nailed it though.

too tame

lacking the mind bending uncomprehendable details that made the first book so special and unique. a fine read, but not a great one.

Recontextualized the first book.

I came into the book hesitantly. I was worried because the summary made it seem as if the romance in this book was going to be pretty important to the plot, and the romances in the previous book were my least favorite part.

I was right, but not in the way I feared. The romance in this book recontextualized how I viewed the romances in the previous book. Where before I thought they were poorly done, now I think the choices that went into writing those romances weren’t mistakes, but very deliberate made to achieve a specific goal, and I think it did so admirably. This book actually makes me like the first book even more than I did before, which is saying something.

Now, this was a very personal experience and had a lot to do with my own biases and experiences, so I doubt anyone else is going to have the same experience, but I wanted to leave this review anyway, because this book made me quite happy.

Be Brave

A great sequel, but lacking the anxiety and confusion from the first book, although the last words describe some beautiful scenes.

Disapointing

After Vita Nostra, the sequel was unexceptional and seemlimgly aimless for the majority of the work. Even with Jessica Ball's captivating narration, it struggled to keep my attention.

Does not live up to the standard of the first book

The narration was excellent, but the story simply did not deliver.

The premise from the first book is wonderful, and we don't mind being perpetually confused, because the Institute is mysterious and we're learning its motives along with Sasha.

However, Sasha becomes so difficult for the reader to relate to, as she uses powers of time loops, reality distortion, flight, memory-planting, and omniscience. As Sasha becomes less human, we care less about her, and answers about the Institute are never really given to us.

Further, the majority of tense situations in the story are simply "resolved" by a jump cut to a different scene. These began to be predictable, and the story suffers from this lack of resolution.

Ultimately, we cared about Sasha in the first book because her circumstances felt unfair, and because the mysterious Institute threatened her human nature. Sasha feels danger in the first book - physical danger and the danger of becoming less human. In the second book, we learn to expect that we will either jump-cut out if the danger, or that the metaphysics of this world are fluid enough to remove the danger.

A solid, interesting story

I think my expectations may have been too high for this one. It was a good story. I liked it very much but it just didn’t have the same magic and mystique as Vita Nostra. I felt slightly disconnected from the characters that I was invested in while reading Vita Nostra. It’s a 3.5 in my mind but I rounded it up to 4 stars for simplicity. I still liked it enough to also buy a hardback copy for my collection.