2022 fantasy, second of its trilogy. Princess Gemma continues to try
to work out what the Mortans are up to.
Estep is following the pattern she established in Crown of
Shards: the romantic tension is largely resolved here, and a
secondary enemy is taken out of play, but the Big Nasty is still there
for the final book. Maeven, who's been the Evil Queen since the start
of the first trilogy, goes a few steps further on her obvious path of
redemption, though some of the backstory invented for her here makes
her less powerful in her own right and more the pawn of someone else's
prophecy.
The action here is less sneaky and more fighty than the first book,
and while the combat is well done it does start to drag after a while.
There's too much going round in circles: too much "you say you love
me, but I can never trust you"; too much "what is the evil prince up
to, we learned nothing new here"; too much "we have to work together
in spite of our friction, oh look we are friends after all". None of
these things is bad once or twice, but when they become recurring
themes they grate.
It's not bad, but I'm not impatient to read the next volume as I was
after book one.
Comments on this post are now closed. If you have particular grounds for adding a late comment, comment on a more recent post quoting the URL of this one.