The Book That Broke the World

I feel like this is a slightly different book from the first one. That's not a bad thing necessarily, but it did take me a while to get over that fact to enjoy it. There is much less of the library and it felt more like a ‘traditional' fantasy in the sense that there was traveling, disparate groups meeting and joining forces and trying to survive against overwhelming odds and foes. There was also MUCH less focus on Livira, who was my favorite character from the first book. I missed her larger presence in this second volume. I also felt the start to middle of this book dragged in places and kept me from being as immersed as I was in the first book, which may be in part due to my expectations of what I thought this story would be and what it was actually. Having said that, I think the end did make up for a lot of the meandering that the first part of the story took and brought it back to what I loved in the first book as well as tying in pieces and mysteries for which the groundwork was laid earlier in the story. I think it is still one of the most unique and intriguing fantasy worlds I have read in a long time and I continue to enjoy what Mark Lawrence is crafting in this trilogy. It may have that shaky “middle book” syndrome a bit, but I get the feeling that will resolve in the final volume, and the things this book sets up will reverberate in the third book. I don't think overall I enjoyed this as much as the first book, but I didn't dislike it by any stretch of the imagination and it still has me excited to see where this all heads in the conclusion.