I’m doing good this year! I’m picking up sequels! I’m probably not picking up the last one in the series, but I am starting to read the rest of the series!
The book is a sequel, but it feels very disconnected from the first one. It’s many months later and now there’s a tournament arc. After Kell saved Rhy at the end of the last book and now they feel one another’s pain, they are both feeling trapped by the arrangement and have decided in order to resolve this, Kell is going to fight in the tournament. Because he needs to get out some aggression and Rhy feels guilty that he’s taken away his brother’s freedom.
And besides the tournament arc, there really isn’t much of a plot. What we get instead is stuff happening in White London that has no connection until it crosses over at the end, and a whole lot of pining and relationship drama. Kell is less interesting, so there are now no characters I care enough about to see their relationship drama.
But I did like seeing Rhy in pain. So there was that.
Once again, Lila as the other lead doesn’t really play much of a role in the overall narrative. She joins the tournament, helping to ensure that we know exactly who is going to move on to the next round with each match,1 but besides being a bit more fun to follow, she doesn’t really do anything to move the story along in a meaningful way.
Which I wouldn’t mind if Rhy and Kell weren’t both so damn miserable the entire book.
Anyway, I’m probably not getting the rest. But there’s a lot more relationship stuff in this one, so if that’s your jam you’ll probably like it.
- The characters we know, they win every round unless they are intentionally losing [↩]