Legends of Dimmingwood, #2
C. Greenwood
Self-Pub, Dec 2012
Kindle, 181 Pages
Also available in paperback, audiobook
Genre(s) dystopian fantasy
Source purchased
Other books in this series
Magic of Thieves #1, Circle of Thieves #3, Redemption of Thieves#4, Journey of Thieves #5, Rule of Thieves #6
My Disclaimer:
I purchased a copy of this book at the current price. I am voluntarily providing an honest review in which all opinions are fully my own. I am not being compensated in any way.
~ Judi E. Easley for Blue Cat Review
What it’s about…
Following the Fists’ raid on the band’s hideout, Ilan returns to collect her hidden stash and runs into Terrac. Terrac is there to say goodbye to Ilan. He’s finally going to continue on to become a priest as was intended before he was captured by the band. Their goodbye is interrupted by the Fists and they make a run for it.
Terrac isn’t as quick as Ilan and ends up badly wounded and taken by the Fists. Ilan has to run. She meets up with a thief named Fleet and she gets to see the underside of the Praetor’s city and meet some of its less savory residents.
Ilan and Fleet set off to locate the priest, Hadrian, with the River folk to get his help because Ilan has decided she has to rescue Terrac from the Praetor’s prison. She can’t leave him suffering in the hands of the Fists.
Ilan is a girl with big, natural magic in a man’s world that has banned magic and destroys those who have it. And somehow she is tied to the Praetor himself, something her parents never told her, something hidden.
Technical Tidbits…
The cover is done by Michael Gauss for the whole series. They are magical! Absolutely wonderful! They catch your eye, they hold your attention. They relate to the story. They are beautiful artwork. C. Greenwood has chosen very well with these covers.
The storyline was ambitious but didn’t seem to quite work out. It sort of fell apart at the end.
The characters have been developing since the first book and will continue through the whole series, I’m sure. Fleet was new and developed very quickly. He became a full-blown character in just a couple of chapters. Ms. Greenwood has a magical touch with characters.
The pace was a bit uneven, fast and frantic for awhile and then just sort of stop and totally idle.
The tension was not maintained throughout the book because the pace kept changing and you’d wonder what was going on and the story would seem to wander off a bit.
And this is where you STOP if you don’t want to see any SPOILERS…
The good, the bad, and the ugly…and how much it lit up my life… ✰✰✰
I had to put this book down and read something else to clear my mind. This is only 181 pages, but for some reason, it seemed to go on and on. I think this series would have been better done as just a couple of larger books and just tighten some things up. This doesn’t feel like it should have been a book. It feels like a section of a book that’s been stretched to be a book.
The storyline was meant to be a grand quest of rescuing Terrac from the Fists’ prison, but he didn’t need rescuing. He was wearing fine clothes and riding around with the Praetor’s hunting party and training with the Fists themselves. No grand quest. It was a dud.
This whole book is held together by the characters. Ilan, Terrac, Fleet, Hadrian, and the Praeter are the anchors and the story just sort of bounces off them. The overarching story is the real grand quest and deserves to be done as a duology or trilogy so that it can be handled in depth and detail. Stretching it to these six short books has diluted it and distracted from the actual story. I intend to read the whole series of six books because I want to read the whole story, but I would have preferred to do it in fewer, richer books. It is available in a set of the six books, and if you decide to read it I suggest buying it this way and going through the whole thing as one story.
732 wc
Advertisements Share this:- More
