Emma Goto
I read The Will of the Many last year after being recommended it by a co-worker - and I think at least 5 of us on my team at work ended up reading it and all really enjoyed it. It's a book that at first glance comes with a lot of YA tropes, but has a lot of great world-building, storyline and characters that more than makes up for it. I did a re-read of this book just recently in preparation for its sequel, The Strength of the Few since I knew I had completely forgotten the plot points. It holds up well.
Now unfortunately, I didn't find book #2 to be as much of a banger as the first one. It's a decent book, don't get me wrong - but it doesn't quite blow me away.
The first book takes place in a school setting, but book 2 has the protagonist Vis graduate and head out in the real world. The author tries to shake things up and we now jump between 3 POVs. The first book had a Rome-esque setting and we are now introduced to a Celtic and Egyptian setting as well, and both comes with a bunch of new characters. And this turned out to be the main weakness! I felt the Celtic setting growing on me over time, but the Egypt one was kind of boring and I just was reading through it waiting to get back to the good bits.
While the book did introduce a lot of cool concepts, I felt like it was just doing a bit too much in one go. To be honest if they had just spent the whole of book two in Celtic-land and then gone to Egypt for book 3 I feel like that would have let you get to know the characters a bit more and hence it enjoy it more as well.
... now I normally wouldn't write this long of a review for a fiction book, but I think since I enjoyed book #1 so much, even though book #2 is still pretty decent on its own, in comparison to the amazing-ness that was #1 it felt like a tiny bit of a letdown in comparison and so I just wanted to vent my feelings about it.
I read The Will of the Many last year after being recommended it by a co-worker - and I think at least 5 of us on my team at work ended up reading it and all really enjoyed it. It's a book that at first glance comes with a lot of YA tropes, but has a lot of great world-building, storyline and characters that more than makes up for it. I did a re-read of this book just recently in preparation for its sequel, The Strength of the Few since I knew I had completely forgotten the plot points. It holds up well.
Now unfortunately, I didn't find book #2 to be as much of a banger as the first one. It's a decent book, don't get me wrong - but it doesn't quite blow me away.
The first book takes place in a school setting, but book 2 has the protagonist Vis graduate and head out in the real world. The author tries to shake things up and we now jump between 3 POVs. The first book had a Rome-esque setting and we are now introduced to a Celtic and Egyptian setting as well, and both comes with a bunch of new characters. And this turned out to be the main weakness! I felt the Celtic setting growing on me over time, but the Egypt one was kind of boring and I just was reading through it waiting to get back to the good bits.
While the book did introduce a lot of cool concepts, I felt like it was just doing a bit too much in one go. To be honest if they had just spent the whole of book two in Celtic-land and then gone to Egypt for book 3 I feel like that would have let you get to know the characters a bit more and hence it enjoy it more as well.
... now I normally wouldn't write this long of a review for a fiction book, but I think since I enjoyed book #1 so much, even though book #2 is still pretty decent on its own, in comparison to the amazing-ness that was #1 it felt like a tiny bit of a letdown in comparison and so I just wanted to vent my feelings about it.
