Review: Great 2nd book in the series (my advice is to read the 1st book)! Has an epic ending I re-read several times :)
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 06 28, 2014
Beached is the second book in the Aegira Chronicles series and features Lecanora’s story. It was mentioned that you could read this book without having read the first book in the series.  But I had a sneaking suspicion that I should probably read the first book anyways. At the time, I was slightly scolded for breaking an overall book geek rule: Thou shall NOT read the books in a series out of order or skip books entirely. So on the road to becoming a better person, I read and reviewed the first book, loved it, and here I am today. I am so glad I read the first book because it allowed me to get fully immersed in the plot of this story and let me thoroughly enjoy the imaginative world and action scenes. Otherwise, I may have been slightly confused and lost (more than normal) and I would have missed some of the enjoyment of this book.Similar to Fish Out of Water, our story starts on land. A “confused” Lecanora is discovering her new found love of french fries. She has just arrived on land on a mission from the Queen: to act as an ambassador to meet with the humans. An evil Aegirian magician is continuing to threaten the lives of humans on land and all inhabitants under the sea. The Aegirians are looking to the humans for help and to warn them. Rania (the heroine of the first book) and her mother, Lunia, have been living on land and have established contacts so they are of course assisting with this mission.Before we get to the purpose of Lecanora’s visit to land and to really get this plot rolling, Ms. Baxter does spend some time giving an overall summary of the world and recap of the events of the previous book. This is particularly handy if you don’t remember much from the first book but it does take up text. There’s also some loose ends from book one that need “mending” so we need to deal with that, too. It’s not all boring because mixed in with this are some pretty intense action sequences and some craziness related to the story.What impresses me the most about this series is Ms. Baxter’s imagination. She is really quite talented at being able to imagine a crazy, original underwater world AND be able to put that picture she has in her head into words. I was able to fully picture her detailed underwater world. I was also able to follow along with her insane action scenes.Lecanora has a love interest in this story but it isn’t as prevalent as Rania and Carragheen were in the last book. Eh, it’s an urban fantasy so… you know…Despite the slowish start, it’s the plot and world building that make this story! The cherry on top is the epic ending that had me re-reading just to make sure I didn’t miss a moment. Definitely worth checking out if you’re looking for a completely different world made up mermaids, merman, dolphins, humans, and super bad guys with super scary weapons.