GREYTHORNE

A tangled web of magic and politics.

Princess Aurelia’s life is in chaos after the catastrophic events of Bloodleaf (2019). Her little brother, Conrad, has had to take up the kingship, but the lands of Achleva and Renalt are in disarray. A refugee crisis echoing current events takes up a little page time, but most of the story revolves around Aurelia’s claiming and deepening her power. Rosetta, a wild witch, teaches her how to walk through a shadow version of the world, seeing and influencing the past and the future, and Aurelia uses this to save the world from religious extremists and an imbalance in the natural world. She’s aided by Zan, returned from what Aurelia thought was death, and her old nurse, Onal, who has stronger ties to the royal family than previously thought. A too-brief interstitial chapter on Magistrate Arceneaux, a cruel, ambitious, supernatural woman, provides the most intriguing part of this sequel, which doesn’t quite live up to the promise of the first installation. Overly complex machinations bog down the forward movement of the plot and largely overshadow any interesting themes. It’s hard to keep track of what matters, or who, or why, which means that no particular sense of urgency propels the story, and trying to figure it all out dampens the enjoyment of the world.

An unsatisfying follow-up.