This is a lengthy book and I can't cover it all, but there are some real highlights to point out: for me, this book was all about the character Ronan, the former "knife" of the Thieves' Guild. He is hiding a pretty enormous secret from his past, and for me one of the two mistakes Bunn made in the book was in the way he let slip Ronan's secret early in the novel, which sort of diluted the impact of the reveal at the novel's end. However, Ronan is a massively conflicted character, a complicated character, a dis-likable and yet likable character (a fine balance that is really tough to pull of as well as Bunn does). Whereas the young thief Jute was the sympathy character in the first novel, Ronan is the man I felt my heart breaking for in this volume. In short, he is the sort of character to pull on your emotions is all the right ways.
The story grows progressively dark as the story continues. If you have read the first book, you'll recognize the pun there, because the "villain" of the series is the nebulous, ephemeral essence called "the Dark." The Dark has consumed the rest of the world, and it now stands in the gates of the cities of Tormay. The four "elementals" are personified in this world, and it is they who stand in the way of the Dark's encroachment. Young Jute is steadily growing into his role as the new Wind "anbeoran" whereas the Earth and Sea continue to defend the realm in secrecy until, at one point, they are forced to play their hands and reveal their strength to the Dark. The end of the novel leaves all sorts of questions hanging about whether or not the Wind, Earth, and Sea (and, I presume, the Fire too, though he has been missing entirely from the story thus far) have the strength to stand against an enemy as primal as the Dark.
Which leads me into the villains here, because whilst the Dark hangs over all, there are numerous of his minions running around, and all of them are amply creepy and frightening. This isn't dark fantasy (another pun), but the villains are satisfyingly strange and hard to be understood. Most interesting, it appears that the Dark's traditional servants find themselves (potentially) torn between two masters, and I suspect the third novel is going to reveal an enemy quite different from what I am expecting, which certainly keeps me on tenterhooks for the next and final volume.
Finally, while I mentioned one of the two things I did not like about the book above (Ronan's reveal), the only other complaint I have has to do with what I felt was uneven tone towards the end. Bunn introduces a talkative ghost to the mix to provide (I assume) some comic relief once everything starts going south and the lightness of tone from the first book has all but evaporated. Basically, I found the ghost to be a distraction at best but a nuisance most of the time. Yes, he says some funny things, but all too often it feels as though he was written in after the fact, as the characters seem to respond to him less than half the time he says anything.
But in the grander scheme of things, this is a mild complaint, for the rest of the book is stellar (even those few chapters in which the ghost appears are full of interesting incidents to hold the attention and allow for easy tuning out of the annoying bits). My only sorrow is that I can't yet click the "Download Now" button to purchase the final book, because this is one epic tale I have to see through to the end.
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