Another interesting volume in this cool fantasy series! We get to meet scary and neat new creatures and powers here, and the stakes are consistently high.
The middle of this is the best part. It's tense and scary and hard to predict in really good ways. Without spoiling too much, even while there are simmering problems in Dar Orien, Irenya has a chance to return to Melbourne. And the way that everything plays out I think feels natural and realistic. It wasn’t super crazy dramatic a moment when she took her chance -- it makes sense that she's built it up to be this huge goal... and, actually, it's not as triumphant and bombastic as she thought it could be. It's haunting!!
My favorite detail about Irenya as a character that I found to be really satisfying and interesting: I actually love that once she’s in a new place, she starts pretty much immediately longing to be with the people from her previous place. This is a subtle and really cool way to “connect the two worlds" and keeps the overall plot exciting. It makes me WANT her to fix the problems in both worlds, and so it keeps me rooting for her!!
The ending is satisfying too. Elaaron is probably my favorite character, I love his personality and love how he is mature, understanding, and also funny once in a while.
As I got to the middle of the book, it occurred to me that this is a really effective “second book”. We’re building on existing powers and introducing new ways those powers can potentially work, and that’s really effective when looking at this as an entire series. It’s hard to do a second book well. Really well done there!
I think a few tweaks would have made this overall even more immersive: in the beginning, I felt like there was kind of a lot of dialogue, and very important revelations were given to us just from overhearing conversations and such. Just hearing a lot of dialogue made it a little bit hard to imagine what the characters we were overhearing were talking about, and it felt a little disconnected. I wish some of that information and suspense was built through something other than kind of a lot of dialogue. Fortunately, though, this only seems to affect the beginning, as especially the middle is action-packed and full of practicing awesome powers and such.
Additionally, while I think the actual chance to go to Melbourne made sense in that it wasn't "super triumphant," I think some of the reactions and reunions with certain characters afterwards were a bit under-played. The time skip is a big deal, but IMO it wasn't treated with enough urgency, and I found myself a little disconnected from how both Irenya and some of the characters she contacted talked about it.
Overall, this was really engaging and did a good job balancing unpredictable twists while everything still felt built-up-to. Cool stuff!!
(Content warning: mental illness, some body horror, depictions of violence)
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