“The dragon’s white eye, the faceless night,
The song of silver, the serpent’s bite,
The child of Heaven, the scarlet- winged tree,
Together at last, the shadow makes three”
It is with a heavy heart that I report a DNF on one of my favorite authors. The prose/writing is clear and crisp. The dialogue is natural and fine. The settings and descriptions are fine but nothing is holding my attention.
(I gave the first one a 4.6 on 10/22/23 but don’t remember anything from the first even after reading my former review & the summary online. This is my problem with series since I don’t have time or interest in rereading the first one.) I jumped into this sequel a bit blind and that didn’t work well.
When the heroine is a risen corpse, I care less about her immediate danger and “dying again,” because immortality oriented plots never settle well with me.
Here were my random thoughts and comments while reading:
27 pages is a lot for the first chapter and a lot happens but the gist seems to be that the previous royal alchemist is undead, like her brother, and searching for the Penglai Island. The only one who knows its location is the Sandstone Alchemist, who traps them underground in a desert.
Around page 84 I started skimming unfortunately because
a) there’s no romance at all since her boyfriend is dead
b) I don’t really care much if they live or die since she can resurrect whoever. So their moments of danger don’t seem to matter
c) I don’t have a solid grasp on WHY they’re doing what they’re doing?
Sidenote- I hate that the first book has a matte cover and this sequel is glossy.
