Taste of Darkness - Maria V. Snyder (Healer #3)

I think I'm done with Maria V. Snyder.  I just keep giving her chances and she just keeps disappointing me.  Taste of Darkness is the sixth book in a row to do so, and I just can't justify continuing on with her works when I am continually let down.  Poison Study was so good, but all of her other works seem to be cardboard cutouts of it, with copy-pasted characters and settings that feel like stage pieces and could be knocked over by a breath of wind.  The entire Glass series felt like this, and now the Healer series has followed suit.

Taste of Darkness is the final book in the Healer trilogy, in which healer Avry and her boyfriend Kerrick, along with their compatriots, try to stop the armies that are taking over the Fifteen Realms in the wake of a plague that decimated the population.  Tohon, the former leader of the takeover, is (presumably) stuck in a stasis, and his second-in-command Cellina has taken over.  Do we ever really see Cellina, or Tohon's armies or, well, any of this takeover stuff?  Not really.  Instead, like in the other books, Avry and her friends spend most of their time running back and forth from location to location in a world that doesn't obey its own logic.

We have all of Snyder's signature characters here: the spunky heroine with unusual magical powers who is being hunted for them; the established love interest who's a badass; the two goofball sidekicks.  None of the characters have undergone any significant growth throughout the books.  The Fifteen Realms don't seem to differ from each other at all, and only three or four of them ever actually came into play.  Cellina is supposed to be leading an army against the forces Avry is allied with, but we never actually see her or it; she's just another throwaway character.  The staple piece of magic in these books, the Peace and Death Lilys (it bothers me to no end that this is not pluralized properly as Lilies) don't play by the rules that Snyder has established; apparently Peace Lilys can't actually bring people back to life, except that they have!  Three separate times.  And Death Lilys kill people, except when they randomly decide not to, and to help them instead.  Tohon apparently somehow protected his classmates from the plague so he could lord over them later, but it's never established how.  The two most interesting elements in these books were really the northern tribes, with their seasonal magic rather than the established eleven types in the Fifteen Realms, and the Skeleton King and his army, but there is no backstory or real exploration of either of these elements.  They're side notes, pushed off as soon as Snyder feels like Avry and her friends need to move for the sake of moving again.  They gallop about from place to place pursuing plots that never really fully develop and don't lend anything to the story as a whole.  Just like Snyder's other books, Poison Study aside, nothing is developed and there are plot holes everywhere.  It's a huge disappointment after how absolutely wonderful Poison Study was.

I don't know if it's because Snyder had more time to work on Poison Study (because it was her first book, and she could polish it before submitting it and being tied to a publisher's more rigid publishing schedule, which has since sometimes involved her releasing more than one book in a year) or if it's something else, but I'm sick of reading books from her that feature the same characters in different guises, worlds that aren't fleshed out, and abundant plot holes.  Snyder was apparently a one-hit wonder who hasn't actually produced anything really new since.

2 stars out of 5, for the potential alone, but I won't be picking up any of Snyder's other books anymore.  Seeing such potential just fall flat time and time again is more than my poor little heart can stand.

Scent of Magic - Maria V. Snyder (Healer #2)

Almost three years ago, I read the first book in Maria V. Snyder's Healer trilogy, Touch of Power, and I utterly slammed it.  I don't regret this.  Despite not having re-read the book in that time, I distinctly remember how unpleasant the story was to begin with, and I have no desire to go back and relive that experience.  That said, while reading some other Snyder books and deciding to do a deeper study on how her writing has changed, I thought I pretty much had to finish the Healer trilogy so I could understand this part of Snyder's writing career and examine any changes within.  And so, after finishing the Glass trilogy, I rather reluctantly checked Scent of Magic out of the library.

Let's start simply: this book was better than Touch of Power, but I'm still not sure it was good.  Avry, our little special snowflake who you can tell is a special snowflake because her name is spelled specially (this is a tried and true method, I assure you) has survived the plague that killed every other healer in the fifteen realms that make up her world.  Or, well, she didn't survive it, but she was brought back to life by a weird plant.  No one understands this plant.  I'm not even sure Snyder understand this plant.  Throughout the first book, and now this one, it really seems like Snyder just went, "Oh, wouldn't it be cool if...?" without really thinking through any of the (missing) logic that could hold up these "cool" things.  Like how are the plants sentient?  If they're spread so far, over distances that are weeks and months apart over varied terrains, how are they really one (or two) organism(s)?  And how do their life/death properties really work?  AND, while we're at it, how on earth does crossing two plants together create a plague?  A new sort of toxin, sure, maybe, depending on the other plant in the equations, but an actual plague?  Like a virus or a bacteria?  That doesn't make any sense.  I don't think that's possible, even in Avry's world.  She tries to explain a way a few of these things throughout this book, and link the plants more closely into the central story, but I didn't feel convinced by any of the flimsy explanations offered.  Since the plants are pretty much the original source of all of Avry's troubles, this is kind of a problem.

In this book, Avry goes undercover in an attempt to conceal the fact that she's still alive--and wanted by pretty much everyone--so she can find her sister and maybe a way to stop Tohon and his zombies.  Of course this does not go as planned.  This is more of Snyder trying to tie in plot threads that she brought up in the first book, but didn't really integrate.  The problem here is that she's still so busy rushing from plot to plot that things get touched on and then brushed aside in a rush, so she can move on to the next thing.  This means that, in addition to plots seeming half-baked, the characters' reactions to them don't come across as genuine.  I mean, the death of an important character (and the apparent deaths of several more) result in reactions akin to, "Oh, that didn't go as planned.  Now he/she is dead.  That's unfortunate, and I'm very sad about it, and if someone else dies I won't be able to go n, but for now here's me, going on quite nicely, thank you very much.  Duty and all!  Hip hip cheerio!"  Okay, maybe not quite so perky as "Hip hip cheerio!" but the rest of it isn't very exaggerated at all.  Meanwhile, all the characters switch personas (mainly from hating Avry to being her best friends) within the space of a few pages and  continue to be so unobservant that it's truly mind-boggling that they manage to get anything done.  How did someone not manage to notice that several hundred extra prisoners of war appeared in their camp overnight?  And then there's Tohon in general, especially because Snyder tries to give him a really weird and stupid motivation in this book, which is that the reason he wants to take over the fifteen realms as the ultimate king is that he didn't get elected king while at school.  What?  In the words of the Monty Python troupe, "You don't vote for kings!"

Probably the best part about this book was Kerrick.  Kerrick, as I remember, was an ass in the first book and I didn't buy his romance with Avry one bit.  In this book, he and Avry are separated for all but a chapter or two, with Kerrick attending to a barbarian invasion in his home realm in the north.  This was interesting.  There's clearly something going on there, and the barbarians have some awesome season-based magic that I would have loved to see more off--we only got a glimpse of Winter's Curse and Summer's Touch.  Rakel was awesome and I wanted her to become a new love interest for this seemingly new-and-improved Kerrick.  I still don't think he should be a good love interest for Avry because of his past actions toward her, but I think he could be redeemed in general.  Maybe.  We'll see.  But as things stand at the end of this book, I'm not sure how much we'll see of the northern people.  Which is sad, because those characters were some of the coolest.

Oh, and this book ends with another total cop-out, especially because it's clear how the cop-out is going to be resolved.

Overall, this was better than Touch of Power.  Snyder wove some of the strands she just dropped in Power to conclusions, and she didn't really add any more brand-new strands that felt like they were discarded out of hand.  But the lack of character growth and the rushing about continue, meaning that nothing really comes across as sincere and it's hard to get emotionally involved in the tale.  Considering that The Mirror King had me getting a little teary-eyed over a character's sacrifice just yesterday, this is a bit disappointing.  It's better than Power, but it's still not good.  It's really just okay.

2 stars out of 5.

Spy Glass - Maria V. Snyder (Glass #3)

Spy Glass is Maria V. Snyder's conclusion to her Glass trilogy, which is a spin-off from her Study books; the main character, Opal, is a supporting character in the Study series, and many Study main characters make guest appearances in the Glass books.

In Spy Glass, Snyder wraps up a few dangling threads that had been left hanging, including what really should have been the main plot of Sea Glass, the second book in the trilogy.  Again, as with the other books in this set, plots appear and are brushed aside and things are barely linked to each other.  Opal spends most of her time rushing to and fro across the realm of Sitia without actually accomplishing much.  This is really a pity, because I thought Spy Glass had the strongest premise of the Glass books going into it, and was much stronger to start out.  Unfortunately, that all devolved once again, leaving a bit of a mess in its wake and a problem that Snyder just kept on perpetuating...

So, Spy Glass occurs in the wake of Sea Glass.  Opal doesn't have magic anymore, the result of draining her magic in an effort to save herself and her friends at the end of Sea Glass.  What she does have is a null shield in her, which means that magic can't really affect her and which is both good and bad.  But early in the book, Opal figures out that some of the blood harvested from her at the end of Sea Glass was never recovered, which means that someone could have it and be using it as part of blood magic.  Opal's entire story has been more or less about stopping blood magic rather than about learning to use her own glass magic, so of course she charges off to stop them.  This was really the strongest part of the book: Opal figuring out how to get the information about her blood, and then going to get said information.  This is probably because it was more like a Study book than a Glass book, and Snyder seems to have a stronger grasp of the characters and plots she created in the Study series.  But this part of the book also brings Devlen back into the picture, which is a huge huge huge problem because Snyder continues to push him as a love interest even though he has repeatedly lied to and tortured the heroine.

After Opal gets the information she needs, well... Things start to devolve.  Again, Opal is running every which way without really getting anything done.  She hithers and yons to her family's lands, to Kade's family's lands, to the Magician's Keep, to see a friend and investigate some black diamonds... And of course, she refuses to see things along the way and ends up in a world of trouble, with a bunch of people (everyone) thinking she's dead, when she's really been kidnapped and is set to be put into a cult as a breeder.  Ew.  This is the plot that should have happened in Sea Glass but somehow got pushed by the wayside for a bunch of, well, nothing.  In the rush to shove it into this book and wrap up everything at once, a few glaring things remain, such as how does Opal get magic back and use it if she still has a null shield?  What about her magic detectors?  Is that just going away entirely?  What about the glass messengers, since that whole operation got derailed and wasn't really what it was portrayed to be in the first place?  All of these are just left dangling, with no resolution in sight.  You can't really say that Snyder planned to wrap them up in the next set of Study books because those weren't even planned when Spy Glass was written.

And then there's Devlen.  Let's talk about Opal's relationships for a moment, shall we?  In Spy Glass, Devlen, the guy who kidnapped, tortured, and has repeatedly lied to and betrayed Opal, makes a reappearance, and to some degree keeps up his old deceptive behaviors.  Despite that, Opal continues to view him as a love interest, and in fact a more desirable one than Kade, her proclaimed boyfriend.  Granted, Opal and Kade's life goals don't really match up with each other.  Kade ultimately realizes this and deals with the situation like an adult, suggesting that they go their separate ways but that he will remain in her life to support her in a platonic manner if she needs him.  Opal, meanwhile, runs off and cheats on Kade with a guy who she has absolutely no reason to trust and who, at a few points, would have been perfectly happy to kill her.  But no, that does not matter to Opal.  All that matters to Opal is that he is a good kisser and has also lost his magic, so he understands her when no one else does.  Please.  This is a terrible relationship example.  Terrible.  I cannot even put into words how bad this is, and yet it's supposed to be all sweet and sexy and fulfilling.  NO!  IT IS NOT.  IT IS BAD.  PEOPLE WHO KIDNAP AND TORTURE YOU SHOULD NOT BE VIEWED AS VIABLE LOVE INTERESTS EVEN IF YOU THINK YOU'RE GOING TO DIE SOON.

And I do want to discuss one more thing: how Opal's story reflects the world of Sitia around her.  Throughout the course of Opal's three books, seemingly dozens of new types of magic have been discovered, from people being able to switch bodies, to people gaining extra magic if they inject the blood of another magician, to messengers and magic detectors, to cold glass magic, and so on.  Snyder tries to highlight how these discoveries have the potential to change how life in Sitia works, and they do--but that Opal somehow discovers or plays a hand in discovering them all lends itself to the impression that, without Opal, life in Sitia would have been completely stagnant, trapped where it was, and that she is a driving force of change, and that nothing has changed in Sitia for ages until Opal came around and sparked it all.  Opal is not  strong enough character to pull this off, and really it made Sitia feel as if it was lacking a rich history because everything is happening now.

Overall, Opal's story continued to its conclusion the way it had been all along: a hot mess.  It's a pity, because I think Opal could have been a very interesting character if she weren't so continually stupid and ineffectual, and if she had, every once in a while, made a decent decision.  As it was, she can't really be called a strong main character, the skews off in every other direction without resolving a lot of things that seem to be pretty important, all the while highlighting things that either aren't important or shouldn't have been.  The beginning part was strong, but once Opal really got on the road again, it lost all sense of true purpose and logic.  This was not a good conclusion, and this was not a good series.

2 stars out of 5.

Poison Study - Maria V. Snyder (Study #1)

So, in the wake of the Maria V. Snyder books I've read recently being, well, disappointments compared to what I remembered Poison Study, Snyder's first book, being, I decided to re-read Poison Study and then the rest of Snyder's books and do an examination of what, writing-wise, happened in them to lead to what I personally feel is a decrease in quality.  Obviously, the best place to star this was the beginning, so I grabbed Poison Study from the library (my own copy is a couple of hundred miles away) and got reading.

Poison Study is Snyder's first book, and I can completely see why it landed her the opportunity to write more.  It begins with Yelena, a young woman awaiting her execution in the dungeons of Ixia's Commander.  Ixia has an absolute zero-tolerance policy for murderers, and so Yelena's bound for the noose...except she isn't.  Luckily for her, there is a loophole in the zero-tolerance policy.  The Commander's food taster recently died, and Ixia's militaristic Code of Behavior dictates that the position of food taster be offered to the next prisoner on death row.  Enter Yelena.  When Valek, the Commander's right-hand man and expert in the arts of assassination, poisons, and general sneakery, offers Yelena the job, she takes it, even though it doesn't pay anything--as Valek says, "The food taster is paid in advance.  How much is your life worth?"

But just because Yelena isn't going to be hung doesn't mean she can't die in any manner of other nasty ways--like poisoning purposeful or accidental, having her throat slit by goons of her victim's father, being assassinated by a magician from the neighboring realm of Sitia, etc.  And while she deals with these continued threats on her life, she also has to deal with burgeoning magical powers that are illegal in Ixia, evil chocolate, and of course Valek himself.  Throughout the book, Valek serves varied roles, such as mentor, protector, love interest, and even potential murderer.  He's definitely one of the coolest characters in the book, and I wish his relationship with Yelena had been a bit more pronounced.  It's not really a slow burn, because it's so subtle for most of the book, until BAM! it isn't anymore.  But Valek was awesome no matter what, having an immense repertoire of skills and knowledge while still managing to be human.

Poison Study is also much tighter than the other Snyder books I've read recently.  All of the plot threads weave together into a coherent whole without any of the dropped plots I've seen from her lately.  Only one character (the briefly-seen Mia) seemed to be superfluous; everyone else was worked in very carefully to suit Snyder's purposes.  This was such a relief, you can't even imagine!  I was so, so, so happy to realize that yes indeed, Poison Study did live up to my memories of it.  The writing's a bit rougher than I remember (I find first-person writing to be rougher in general, no matter who is holding the pen), and Snyder has a thing for info-dumping from time to time, but the book as a whole was great.  She doesn't shy away from Yelena's traumatic past at all; the book actually starts with Yelena's memories of being tortured so really, you know what you're getting into here.  She's a murderer who doesn't regret her actions at all, but is still a good person with a steady moral compass.  Basically she's great.  I never felt that Yelena was being blatantly stupid.  I never wanted to smack her for a dumb decision.  Sometimes she delayed a good decision for a while, but she didn't let it get to the point that it was a danger to herself and others, and she always went into situations as prepared as she could be, even if it didn't necessarily end up in her favor.

Ixia is an interesting setting, too--a country under a militaristic government but not at war, settling into the new way of life after generations of living in the shadow of what seems to have been a tyrannical monarchy.  Actually, a book set during that era could be really interesting.  The magic system isn't really developed fully because magic is forbidden in Ixia (though it does exist and does occur) but that didn't bother me because it's clearly going to be developed more in Poison Study's sequel, Magic Study, and a robust magical system wasn't important to the overall plot of the book.

So, to conclude, yes: Poison Study was all that I remembered it being.  It's a great story with a strong heroine who, despite having a tragic past, isn't cliched in the slightest.  Yelena and Valek are compelling main characters and are fully capable of carrying this story to its conclusion.  Poison Study is a great, unusual fantasy book, and I think it's worth a read for most fantasy lovers out there.

4.5 stars out of 5.

Sea Glass - Maria V. Snyder (Glass #2)

I continue to be confounded by Maria V. Snyder's books because I remember Poison Study being SO GOOD and the rest just...aren't.  I remember thinking that Magic Study and Fire Study weren't as good as Poison, but I also don't remember them skittering from place to place and dropping plot threads and introducing terrible ideas all the time like her other books do, and that must them very frustrating reads.

Sea Glass continues the story of Opal Cowan, who first appeared in the Study series and then starred in Storm Glass.  Sea picks up where Storm left off, with Opal traveling back from Ixia with Janco and some other guards and Devlen, who is in Ulrick's body.  Devlen is by far the worst part of this series, not because of who he is as a character (really nasty characters can be really good characters to read, even if you'd never want to actually encounter them in real life) but because of what Snyder continues to try to do with him.  Namely, she continues to try to make him a viable love interest for Opal, a counterpoint to the ever-awesome Kade.  The problem with this, of course, is that Devlen is evil.  He insists he's not, that he's changed our ways, and Snyder tries to convince us of this in several different manners, but the fact of the matter is that he tortured Opal, repeatedly, and not because someone else made him and he had to do it to save her life or anything.  No, he did it of his own volition, and there's really no coming back from that to be a "good guy."

Opal herself is the second worst part, because she continues to be a weak character in pretty much every manner.  She is literally only useful at like two points in this book; she keeps blundering into trouble and traps and setting herself up for failure and needing to be rescued, but suddenly at the climax, BAM!  SHE IS THE ONLY ONE WHO CAN SAVE THEM.  Considering how the rest of the book went, with Opal pretty much being a screwup, I found that really hard to believe.  She doesn't trust anyone, despite having plenty of reasons to do so, and when something doesn't go the way she'd planned--you know, maybe because she went rogue for a while or something like that--she immediately assumes she's being persecuted and that no one cares about her, blah blah blah.  When she (slightly) comes to her senses later, at various points, she goes, "Oh, well maybe it's because they didn't consider x," but then never actually tells them x so that they can consider it.  She creates all of her own problems, and while watching a character struggle is supposed to be one of the joys of reading because struggles can make characters grow so much, I really just wanted to slap Opal upside the head or across the face for most of the book because she is so stupid.

And then there are the plot lines.  The central plot of this series seems to be with Opal's glass magic and Devlen & Co.'s blood magic, all of which make things difficult for everyone.  But Snyder keeps throwing in other plot lines, like the actual sea glass plot in this book, which lasted for about two chapters and then was completely dropped without any sort of conclusion.  Someone making sea glass that drives people crazy, and who lives in a weird oyster-harvesting cult?  Cool!  This must be the central plot, considering the book is called Sea Glass!  Let's go investigate!  Oh, never mind, it turned out to be nothing and now we're just chasing our tails around again...  The rubies in glass animals, Opal's experiments with her diamonds, and her search for other glass magicians can also be included in the category of "things that could have been promising plot points but never actually developed into anything."  I think Snyder has an interesting world here, and she is aware of it--but she tries to do too much at once and ends up dropping most of it along the way, which means that the story isn't as tightly-knit as it could or should be, and instead ends up reading as very scattered.

For now, I'm going to keep going with Snyder's books; I only have one more Glass book left, and I have the fourth Yelena book, Shadow Study from the library.  But I've put in a request for Poison Study, too, so that I can re-read it and hopefully determine if Snyder's first novel really was better, and that there might be hope for the future, or if I'm just looking on it with nostalgia and should just give up.

2 stars out of 5.

This book also fulfilled my "A book with a blue cover" category for my 2016 reading challenge.

Storm Glass - Maria V. Snyder (Glass #1)

Let me begin by saying that Storm Glass was substantially better than Touch of Power, my last encounter with Maria V. Snyder's work.  However, it definitely has some serious flaws, which lead me to believe that either Poison Study, which I loved, wasn't actually as good as I remember it being, or that it was a one-hit wonder and Snyder has deteriorated since.

The plot of this book revolves around Opal Cowan, a young magician with powers linked to glass.  She first appeared in Snyder's Study series, and that's where the trouble begins.  Though this is the first book in a completely new trilogy, it absolutely cannot stand on its own.  Someone who had not read the entire Study trilogy would be utterly lost when faced with many of the characters and situations Opal faces.  Having read that first trilogy, I knew what was going on, but there was so much mentioned from it that was never explained that a new reader wouldn't know what was being discussed for a significant portion of the book.  While this means that readers of the first series don't have to hear a lot repeated, it also means that Snyder risks alienating new readers by leaving them dazed and confused about what's going on.

There are a couple of plot lines going on in this book, which isn't necessarily a bad thing.  One deals with the struggles of the Stormdance clan.  The glass orbs they use to trap the energy of storms have been sabotaged, and they're killing the dancers.  Opal, as a glass magician, is the obvious choice to help discover what's going on.  She's also the obvious choice to help disband a diamond smuggling and counterfeiting operation by telling which gems are glass and where they came from.  These plot lines intertwine, with characters coming and going and things generally progressing.  But about three quarters of the way through the book, Snyder introduces what looks to be another plot line, which relies entirely on material from the first three books.  Some of it is mentioned, very briefly and in passing, in Storm Glass, but not with enough sense.  Also, Opal says she's been having weird dreams related to this plot line ever since her return from the Stormdance lands, which doesn't make any sense because they're not mentioned anywhere before she announces she's been having them.  There is one weird dream she has, but it doesn't appear to be connected at all; apparently it was meant to be, but when it's actually mentioned as a tie-in, it just doesn't make any sense.

Opal is an interesting character in that she's not your typical kick-ass heroine.  She has some unique abilities, but she was also put through a lot of shit in the past, and it's left her with very little confidence in herself.  She doesn't believe that she can actually do anything worthwhile, so her development throughout the course of the story is interesting to watch.  Kade the stormdancer is awesome, and I wish he had been more prevalent in the book.  One of things I didn't like was Snyder's decision to implement the dreaded Love Triangle.  While Ulrick's character wasn't bad, I would have preferred him as a non-love interest.  He was moody and possessive and overall just not a good example of what should be looked for in a relationship.  And then when you throw in the weird Devlen element... Ugh.  I think this could have been de-complicated quite a bit.

The writing is a complicated mix.  I think it gets more complex as the book goes on, because it starts off very simplistic (not in a good way) but that might just have been me adjusting to how it was written.  I think Snyder does a pretty good job capturing Opal's emotions and thoughts, but the descriptions are somewhat lacking.  They're very much tell and very little show, and I think that might stem from the first person nature of the book.  (I generally really don't like first person narratives much at all.)

Still, I overall enjoyed this much more than Touch of Power, and I'll probably read the next book, Sea Glass, to see where Opal goes next.

3 out of 5 stars.

Touch Of Power - Maria V. Snyder (Healer #1)

I actually had to double check that this book was by Maria V. Snyder because, uhm, what happened to her writing?  I adore her first novel, Poison Study, though I adored its sequels slightly less, and while I haven't read the Glass series or the Insider duo, I was looking forward to this one.  I just don't understand what happened!  The book was a sloppy mess, and Snyder's writing seems to have de-matured between Poison Study and Touch of Power.  Touch of Power just seemed like a slapdash collection of plot elements, including:

-flower that may or may not be able to kill you
-eleven types of magic, many of which seem to contradict   each other and none of which are properly explained
-multiple princes
-a religious cult
-fifteen realms, one of which randomly has a president that is very out of place
-way too many caves
-a plague that kills anyone who tries to cure it
-a missing sibling
-zombies
-a romance that doesn't really ring true

So.  While I liked how healing magic works in Touch of Power, with a healer assuming an injured/sick person's maladies and then healing herself by just getting better ten times faster than a normal person would, that was pretty much the only good part of this book.  Everything else just feels like Snyder cobbled together a bunch of different story lines, any one of which would have made a respectable novel of its own.  It just felt like this wasn't actually the novel Snyder wanted to write.  I couldn't decide if she wanted to write a zombie novel, a school story about the children of powerful/royal families, a book about a plague-ravaged land, a tale of rescuing a lost sibling, a narrative of struggle about coming to terms with a hated power, or a chronicle of trying to bring down an evil king. All of those were present here, and it was just too much.  Not a single aspect was explored fully, leaving the book a hurried rush from one plot element to the next without anything actually being settled.

Additionally, every single one of the characters in this book lacks dimension.  They are all single-faceted, which makes their "growth" come across as false, especially Kerrick.  What was up with that sudden romance?  While it's not insta-romance in the sense that they fall in love right away, when it does happen, it's pretty instantaneous, with no build or maturation of the relationship at all.  And while Avry is a perfectly nice protagonist, she isn't someone you can really root for, because she's not really struggling.  She's just kind of there.  We're just supposed to accept that Avry is Special, and that is why everything goes right for her.

Speaking of that, what was with that ending?  I have NEVER seen a more blatant cop out on explanation.  NEV.  ER.

Overall, while I'm kind of curious as to what Avry &. Co. will get up to next, I'm not curious enough to slog through another of these when there's much better stuff out there.

1.5 stars out of 5.