I have a serious case of the mixed feelings here, friends. I really liked Reign of Shadows. Found it interesting. Wanted to see where the story went, since it ended on quite the cliffhanger. So yeah, I was excited to dive back in!
But things... they didn't go as I had hoped? Okay. Look. It wasn't all bad. So let's start with the things I liked!
- I did get more Fowler and Luna, yay! I shipped them so much in the first book, so I was happy that there is more shipping to be had.
- It's quite a fast read. I was done in no time, and it was really readable- I wanted to get to the end to know what happened. So for sheer entertainment value, it gets points from me.
There were... problems though. Things like...
- The dialogue felt a mess. It was... stunted, if that makes sense. Robotic, perhaps. And Fowler kept talking about Luna's "taste", and I started to get pretty freaked out. Once, twice, even three times, I could handle. But dude was talking about "tasting her" every three seconds. And like, they were disgusting- had been fighting for their lives and stuff? She even talked about being covered in slime and such. So this was not an appealing visual. At all.
And for just so long, they both kept saying the same thing over. And over. And over. Like, okay, I got it the first forty-seven times you declared that emotion. It was exhausting. - A lot of the things that happened were quite predictable throughout the book. Especially once it got going, and you could see where the plot was headed.
- The ending was such an anticlimactic, out of left field disaster. Look, I didn't even dislike it, per se. But it was... random. And incredibly easy. Too easy. And if we had taken like, 1/100th of the time that Fowler spent "tasting" Luna on a better ending... well I think it could have been much more believable and reasonable.
Bottom Line: This is hard, because it really was not the best sequel. And if I were being wholly objective, it is probably a disaster. However, I tend to rate with my heart, as we know, and I did find enjoyability in it. So it wasn't all bad. Just... mostly.
*Copy provided for review