The short story format makes the world more believable than did the full length [b:For Darkness Shows the Stars|8306761|For Darkness Shows the Stars|Diana Peterfreund|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1338529086s/8306761.jpg|13155802] mostly because there isn't much world building at all. Regardless, I enjoyed it quite a bit. ( )

Augh. This one is almost hard to vote a star-chart number on.

The writing is beautiful, and I was glad for a sight of what it looked like when Kai first escaped. At least, mostly. But the things I really, really wanted to see Kai grow and go through are the ones that started right on the last page, and then the story was over, which left me feeling kind of deeply disappointed in this one, too.

I'm rating it for writing and beauty, but I guess advising people not to go into this one looking for much either? ( )

Read my overall review of the whole series here! Spoiler Free!

I read this book after I read [b:For the Darkness Shows the Stars|8306761|For Darkness Shows the Stars (For Darkness Shows the Stars, #1)|Diana Peterfreund|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1338529086s/8306761.jpg|13155802] (FTDSTS) and I am glad that I did.

I liked that when I read FTDSTS that Kai was a bit of a mystery and I didn't know his feelings towards Elliot. Also, some things that were revealed as you read FTDSTS were mentioned in this novella and I think it takes away from the mystery of FTDSTS when you read it first.

Overall though, the book is really interesting and it helps shape the world--and when it's FREE, it doesn't get any better than that ;)

Check out more spoiler-free book and series reviews on my blog SERIESousBookReviews.com as well as read book series recaps!

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Set before the story found in For Darkness Shows the Stars, Among the Nameless Stars is narrated by Kai and shows us what happened to him after he left Elliot and her father’s estate.

It’s a pretty quick and action packed read, it also allows the reader into Kai’s head and allows us to experience the pain and betrayal that he felt from Elliot. This also makes Kai appear less of a jerk when we meet him again in For Darkness Shows the Stars.

Though you don’t need to read this to enjoy For Darkness Shows the Stars, I do recommend reading it before, especially if you haven’t read Persuasion, it will give you better insight into Kai’s character and the world he lives in.
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"Among the Nameless Stars" is a prequel to For Darkness Shows the Stars, a dystopian re-telling of Jane Austen's Persuasion. It's told from Kai's persepctive, and tells of his leaving the North farm and heading to the free Post city - but how he found wasn't the wonderful things that he and Elliot always dreamed of. One of my friends enouraged me to read this, saying that it would make me more sympathetic to Malakai, and to forgive him for being mean to Elliot when he returned to the North lands. And she was partially right. He is a sympathetic character, still basically a wide-eyed kid with no idea how bad the world can really be. But I still don't forgive him for being mean to Elliot - that's not what Captain Wentworth's character is supposed to be about, no matter how terrible his life on his own was! One of the most interesting things about this story was the background that it gave on some of the secondary characters from For Darkness Shows the Stars, and on how Kai hooked up with the Fleet.