Review: enjoyable enough
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 01 18, 2013
This is the second book in the Order of the Blade series and it was a fun little read. It picked up where the first left off and, as expected, followed the soul mates Gideon and Lily. I liked Lily. She was a strong survivor, which is good since she also seemed like a perpetual victim. I also like Gideon. He was a strong, honourable man and anyone who has read many of my reviews knows that I like that character type a lot. Unfortunately I didn't like Lily and Gideon together very much.I could get over the insta-love. It's really to be expected in this genre. I even accepted that they had an extra strong attraction to one another due to her magic and his whole Sheva thing. What I had trouble with was that she essentially condemned him for doing what he was supposed to. Yes, she accepted him eventually, but she still made him grieve his previous actions, grovel and apologise. I don't mean that she forced him to do it, but she made him feel like he needed to.No doubt this was meant to be read as her bringing the ice-king to life and teaching him to feel again. In fact we're essentially told so. However, to me it just felt wrong. Soldiers do horrible things during times of war and the Order is at war. Why should he have to apologise for difficult but honourable actions? His personal need to atone undermined the unavoidable necessity of those situations. It felt like it weakened his commitment to the cause and I simply didn't like it. This is, of course, a completely personal opinion and nothing more.The ultra baddie that they were up against kept me interested, though his minions seem awful easy to beat. I thought the ending was a little sappy for my taste, but the threads left open for Elijah and Ana's story is really tempting. I'm torn because I like the characters and would like to know more about the rest of the Order members, but I already kind of feel like I've had enough of the series. Maybe there just wasn't enough of a difference between the first and the second books. I don't know. I'm still undecided.Note: In the end I did end up reading the third one.