Review: Simply un-put-down-able
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 07 8, 2014
What does one do after reading KM Riley’s ‘Spirit: Awakening’? Well, read the sequel, of course! Fortunately, getting a copy of ‘Spirit: Reckoning’ is an easy decision: as it turns out, it was already published and has garnered a number of good reviews, so I figured if the first book’s good, then the sequel must even be better, right?I was right, as it turns out. ‘Spirit: Reckoning’ is an even more engaging tale, so powerfully written that it practically glues you to your seat, unable to look away. And here I’m trying to put it in the least exaggerated terms. This book, as in the first one, follows Princess Adele, but this time, she grapples and is practically torn apart by her new-found “help”: a mysterious guide that is supposedly helping her, but often only ends up increasing her confusion. And there’s one catch: only Adele can see him. And as if that’s not enough, Locien is still as relentless as ever: the threat he poses intensifies as the story proceeds, and with clever foreshadowing, by the middle of the book you already get that palpable sense of an impending, final showdown.Adele’s role as the only possible savior of her land is not cut and dried—the path has many forks and twists and, as the old Oasis song goes (“And all the lights that lead us there are blinding,” sings the band in “Wonderwall”), bestrewn with surprises, many of them unpleasant.I have grown to love Riley’s ‘Spirit’ series in the same violently loyal way I do with George Martin’s ‘A Song of Fire and Ice’ series because the fact is, the evil, the politics, the power struggle in Riley’s series of books feel realistic to the bone, only told through a fantasy narrative. This is my way of saying this is not just a fantasy book—the story thus far cloaks multiple layers of meaning that you can’t help but feel that everything—every thread and subplot—will inevitably conclude in the only way acceptable: majestically.Get a copy of this book. Seriously. But do yourself a favour and start with book 1 first. Satisfaction guaranteed.