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A review by emarleene
Amid Wind & Stone by Nicole Luiken
3.0
This is the second book in the Otherselves series and I received this novel in exchange for an honest review.
In the first book, Leah lost her soul mate Gideon and fought together with her otherself Holly to protect Gideon’s otherself from the same fate. They managed to save Ryan on water world and now the time has come to the two other mirror worlds, air and stone.
Here we are introduced to Dorotea from Stone and Audrey from Air. War is coming to Audrey’s city and an angry Goddess in threatening to destroy Dorotea’s home. As if this wasn’t enough, now they have to learn about the mirror worlds and help save a soul mate they haven’t even met yet.
As I started this book my first thought was that the transfer from Leah and her world to the new worlds wasn’t as smooth as it could have been. It felt a bit rushed and somehow these new worlds and new characters were pushed upon me and I wasn’t sure what was happening. I wanted to continue the story from the first novel, but I got stuck with something completely new with nothing leading back to the previous novel. It took quite a long time for the stories to sort of intertwine. I can somehow understand the difficulty in getting a smooth transition and obviously the reader has to connect with the new worlds and characters too, but in my opinion there was something lacking.
Dorotea’s world has some interesting plot points and I was more drawn to her story even if it was quite obvious to me as a reader who the gargoyle she forced to work for her was. I liked the gargoyle and the story behind how they came to be trapped. But Audrey’s world didn’t get to me at all and half way through the book I gave up and mostly speed read her parts (meaning I skipped a lot).
After Leah appeared in these novels and at times even Holly, the story took off and became more interesting and I felt how my eagerness to keep reading returned. It was a bit slow in the beginning since it took such a long time for this book to catch up to where we left off in the first one.
Overall, the book was decent and I’m glad I read it. It didn’t quite live up to my expectations after reading the first one in the series though. It felt rushed and perhaps this series would have benefitted from having made this second installment into two separate books, one for air and one for stone.
The writing was good and the worlds were interesting in a way too. I loved reading about the stone world and I could easily picture it and I liked learning about their history and the gargoyles etc. Air world however felt too complex to be explained in the limited space reserved for it and therefore it was mostly confusing and hard to picture. I got the feeling it was supposed to be sort of steampunk and it had its moments, but as I said it needed more time to bloom.
I still recommend reading this book for those who enjoyed the first book in the series.
In the first book, Leah lost her soul mate Gideon and fought together with her otherself Holly to protect Gideon’s otherself from the same fate. They managed to save Ryan on water world and now the time has come to the two other mirror worlds, air and stone.
Here we are introduced to Dorotea from Stone and Audrey from Air. War is coming to Audrey’s city and an angry Goddess in threatening to destroy Dorotea’s home. As if this wasn’t enough, now they have to learn about the mirror worlds and help save a soul mate they haven’t even met yet.
As I started this book my first thought was that the transfer from Leah and her world to the new worlds wasn’t as smooth as it could have been. It felt a bit rushed and somehow these new worlds and new characters were pushed upon me and I wasn’t sure what was happening. I wanted to continue the story from the first novel, but I got stuck with something completely new with nothing leading back to the previous novel. It took quite a long time for the stories to sort of intertwine. I can somehow understand the difficulty in getting a smooth transition and obviously the reader has to connect with the new worlds and characters too, but in my opinion there was something lacking.
Dorotea’s world has some interesting plot points and I was more drawn to her story even if it was quite obvious to me as a reader who the gargoyle she forced to work for her was. I liked the gargoyle and the story behind how they came to be trapped. But Audrey’s world didn’t get to me at all and half way through the book I gave up and mostly speed read her parts (meaning I skipped a lot).
After Leah appeared in these novels and at times even Holly, the story took off and became more interesting and I felt how my eagerness to keep reading returned. It was a bit slow in the beginning since it took such a long time for this book to catch up to where we left off in the first one.
Overall, the book was decent and I’m glad I read it. It didn’t quite live up to my expectations after reading the first one in the series though. It felt rushed and perhaps this series would have benefitted from having made this second installment into two separate books, one for air and one for stone.
The writing was good and the worlds were interesting in a way too. I loved reading about the stone world and I could easily picture it and I liked learning about their history and the gargoyles etc. Air world however felt too complex to be explained in the limited space reserved for it and therefore it was mostly confusing and hard to picture. I got the feeling it was supposed to be sort of steampunk and it had its moments, but as I said it needed more time to bloom.
I still recommend reading this book for those who enjoyed the first book in the series.