by Jamie Magee
For starters this is more of a 3 and a half star because I just couldn't do a four. There are a few things that still bugged me. That in mind this book was far better than the first. This is certainly one of those times that the author gets better with practice. I wonder what the third book has in store for us. So, lets get the bad stuff out of the way before moving on. I liked that there seemed to be more personality for the characters. It was funny at first how everyone joked about Willow not being able to cook. But after oh three times it wasn't so funny anymore. Also, I thought the foreshadowing on Brady was a bit extreme. Yeah, I figured out something would go down with that the first time you mentioned it in the first book. I mean why do authors go out of their way to mention how uncanny a resemblance is between two characters. In most cases I have come across it will be important later on. For me having to be reminding several times was a bit much. Willow got on my nerves a bit with her constant mood swings. Oh woe is me and then you better watch out or I will blow your head off. But I suppose that is actually rather common in reality. I mean who is really all that stable anyway?
Okay, so good points included much better character development and some better dialog. I felt we spent more time exploring the story than rehashing things. This was a much faster read since I felt drawn into it. Another thing I liked was some of the deeper things trying to be taught. I recently went to hear a man talk about Space. Just before he retired he had been working on a way to transport a large part of the populace to some distant planet that could support life. It was a super monstrosity that would take one hundred years to build. Then easily that to travel to the new planet. It could house a lot of people and several generations would live out their entire lives on this ship. He said that the one thing that we would have to accomplish to make this possible was peace. We would have to put aside all differences and problems and live in harmony or else the population on the ship would destroy itself before it reached its destination. I felt this book was very much in harmony with that idea. At the same time I didn't really like one of the ideas being passed around in this book. Willow was rather upset that she had loved another in many lifetimes. The advice she was given sounded so much like it doesn't matter what your body does as long as your soul stays true. Yeah, I don't think that speaks well for faithfulness. Perhaps, I am too much consumed by jealously to take that sort of excuse if my husband's body wandered over to "love" another.
So, in conclusion I feel better about the series but feel as if the third book will be more of the deciding factor. Until then, keep reading the other great reads.
