Review: We'll see what's next
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 06 27, 2014
This book picks up just after the end of the first book…because it had too. Needless to say I didn’t like the way the first book ended, but since it rolled over so evenly into the second one, I was more opened-mined to continue reading the story. (I bounced back and forth between listening and reading on my Kindle.)In this follow up to the Call of the Herald, Catrin goes on a “Lord of the Rings” type journey in search of…I think, the understanding of her power. The style of this story seemed a bit different from the first book, but after I got used to it, it wasn’t too bad. My major complaint is that not a lot happens for a long time and then everything seemed to happen all at once.It was nice to learn more about Catrin’s background and that of her friends, even though, outside of Benjin (can’t remember how this is spelled), the others characters seem to do very little. There are tons of new characters introduced and some of them are even still alive at the end of the book, and who knows they may appear in the next story.The understanding of the role of Herald isn’t clarified explicitly, but I think this is a good thing. It gives the reader room to decide if the Herald is a vessel for good or evil before seeing how things will play out in the story. At this point, it could still go either way for Catrin, especially sense she can’t seem to decide if she’s a strong feisty fighter or a meek lost child. Sometimes she takes hold of the situation and uses her powers boldly and other times, she makes me think of a young wizard hold out his wand with his eyes clothes hoping that he’s doing something right. I want Catrin to be a stronger woman than acts like sometimes.Also, some of the relationships in this book are too quick or underdeveloped. Catrin meets her grandmother and a few passages later, we’re on to something else.After saying all this, I want to be clear that I did enjoy this story, just not as much as I did the first one. I’ll eventually continue the series and would recommend it to fans of epic fantasy.