Top critical review
3.0 out of 5 starsExciting rollercoaster of a shifting world
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 15, 2020
From a cage of iron to the cage of mistrust, Allie has come back to the mortal realm and a town which is not as she left it two short seven-days ago – for here, ten years have passed, the town has grown, and Queen Anabetha now pays attention to this town in sending her Knights to defend it. Olen Chanter is one of these Knights, and many of the men – men who where Allie’s age when she left for the Faewald – stand beside him, with the Queen’s Knights to support them. But just because the Knights have come and Skundton has changed does not mean that they are ready for the news Allie brings of the Faewald’s imminent invasion, led by none other than her sister and Lady of Cups, Hulanna. With Scouvrel trapped in servitude back in the Faewald, Allie must use all her Hunter skills and every ounce of plotting she learned in the Faewald in order to prepare her village for what is to come and save as many as she can. But if no one will listen to her, how can she save them?
The story seems at the beginning to have a hard time deciding if it needs to take things quickly or slowly, given how Allie goes about trying to make and enact a plan to save the missing children and protect her village from the Fae invasion, but this sort of keeping off-balance works in its favor, as you’re never quite sure what is coming around the next bend in the spirit-line path, other than that a surprise is sure to be found at the end of each new path. And once Allie starts enacting her ever-evolving plan, and learning more tidbits of information which both help and hinder her, things just keep going faster and faster. You find yourself on the downward plunge of a steep roller coaster in the middle rather than at the beginning, leaving you unsure what is around the next corner except that you have to keep going and won’t be satisfied until you reach the end, no matter what it holds – corkscrews, loop-de-loops, spirals, twists, or anything else. I will also say that this book feels very much like a middle high point of a story, or the high action leading right into the big climax of a larger/longer story. It doesn’t <i>quite</i> stand on its own, with how reliant on both what came before and what is sure to come, but it also includes enough support and growth to be stable and encourage you to keep reading not only this installment, but be hungry for the next. I know I am.
I received a free eARC in exchange for an honest review. This has not affected the contents of my review or rating.
