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A review by faeonyx
Rise of the Evening Star by Brandon Mull
5.0
The second book in the series, Rise of the Evening Star gets off to a slow start by grounding readers in Kendra's world at home. Fortunately, things start getting a little more interesting with the introduction of a new character, Casey Hancock. The other girls in Kendra's school seem to find him incredibly attractive where Kendra can see who he really is due to being kissed by thousands of fairies in the first book. She no longer has to drink the milk and because of this she can see that Casey is a goblin type creature. She spends the first chapters unsure as to whether he knows she knows or not. It's a little confusing and muddy for the reader initially, but raising some very interesting questions that help to propel the action forward.
Kendra, and the readers through her, gets the feeling that Casey can't be there for any good reason, and this starts to become apparent when their teacher, Mrs. Price, falls suddenly ill after someone had placed a tack on her chair. It seemed to change her personality completely, and in Kendra's mind the only suspect was Casey. Things start getting really weird, building enough tension in the beginning of the book to leave readers looking for the right answers.
Once more, the book delves into the story with a feeling of foreboding. The reader is left feeling like they aren't being told the entire story, which is true as things are revealed to us only when they are revealed to Seth and Kendra. Every new character that is introduced is looked upon with hesitancy. The circumstance with Errol, however, lull Kendra and Seth into a false sense of security. They haven't been able to contact their grandparents, so they have no choice but to trust him. He has information about Kendra that makes him seem more trustworthy, but even with that there is a certain edge to his personality that makes him seem questionable.
It seems that the characters that deal with magical creatures become somewhat like magical creatures themselves. As Kendra's grandfather said in the first book, they aren't necessarily good or evil, but instead fall somewhere in a grey area. In the same way, it is extremely difficult to sort out the motives of most of the characters aside from trusting the initial assumptions made by Kendra and Seth as they come into contact with these characters.
Throughout this book, Kendra and Seth become much more useful members of the team, but there is trouble lurking when it becomes obvious that someone inside Fablehaven is a traitor. The author keeps us guessing at this until enough evidence has mounted for Stan to make an accusation after putting all the pieces together. However, it isn't one of those things that is super easy to figure out before the story reveals it. Once again, after the evil is introduced, it falls to the kids to resolve the situation. However, it seems that Kendra and Seth have learned quite a bit from their previous experiences and are better equipped to deal with this new challenge.
The way that the children seem to have changed and grown between the first book and this book is probably one of the better elements of the story. There isn't such a huge change that it isn't believable, but there are elements of their personalities that are being molded around the experiences that they had in the first book. This leaves them with a different sense of confidence and secrecy and allows them to make better decisions, even though they are still difficult choices, to make sure they are able to carry on in the second book.
Still, this book is carried by an underlying current of foreboding. The reader knows that something isn't quite right through the entirety of the book. There are elements of the stories, characters, that just don't seem to mesh correctly, but with the way things have been set up it is hard to tell if anyone's motivations are truly pure or if they are actually completely bad. The older characters seem to stress the importance of picking allies very carefully, but then fall into the same traps that they have warned the children of again and again.
It seems that the action is only just building and that the story has plenty to reveal. Fortunately, the building action in this book has managed to maintain momentum. The way the story is told allows the reader to actually feel the urgency that the characters in the book are experiencing as they feel they are losing ground to the Society.
Kendra, and the readers through her, gets the feeling that Casey can't be there for any good reason, and this starts to become apparent when their teacher, Mrs. Price, falls suddenly ill after someone had placed a tack on her chair. It seemed to change her personality completely, and in Kendra's mind the only suspect was Casey. Things start getting really weird, building enough tension in the beginning of the book to leave readers looking for the right answers.
Once more, the book delves into the story with a feeling of foreboding. The reader is left feeling like they aren't being told the entire story, which is true as things are revealed to us only when they are revealed to Seth and Kendra. Every new character that is introduced is looked upon with hesitancy. The circumstance with Errol, however, lull Kendra and Seth into a false sense of security. They haven't been able to contact their grandparents, so they have no choice but to trust him. He has information about Kendra that makes him seem more trustworthy, but even with that there is a certain edge to his personality that makes him seem questionable.
It seems that the characters that deal with magical creatures become somewhat like magical creatures themselves. As Kendra's grandfather said in the first book, they aren't necessarily good or evil, but instead fall somewhere in a grey area. In the same way, it is extremely difficult to sort out the motives of most of the characters aside from trusting the initial assumptions made by Kendra and Seth as they come into contact with these characters.
Throughout this book, Kendra and Seth become much more useful members of the team, but there is trouble lurking when it becomes obvious that someone inside Fablehaven is a traitor. The author keeps us guessing at this until enough evidence has mounted for Stan to make an accusation after putting all the pieces together. However, it isn't one of those things that is super easy to figure out before the story reveals it. Once again, after the evil is introduced, it falls to the kids to resolve the situation. However, it seems that Kendra and Seth have learned quite a bit from their previous experiences and are better equipped to deal with this new challenge.
The way that the children seem to have changed and grown between the first book and this book is probably one of the better elements of the story. There isn't such a huge change that it isn't believable, but there are elements of their personalities that are being molded around the experiences that they had in the first book. This leaves them with a different sense of confidence and secrecy and allows them to make better decisions, even though they are still difficult choices, to make sure they are able to carry on in the second book.
Still, this book is carried by an underlying current of foreboding. The reader knows that something isn't quite right through the entirety of the book. There are elements of the stories, characters, that just don't seem to mesh correctly, but with the way things have been set up it is hard to tell if anyone's motivations are truly pure or if they are actually completely bad. The older characters seem to stress the importance of picking allies very carefully, but then fall into the same traps that they have warned the children of again and again.
It seems that the action is only just building and that the story has plenty to reveal. Fortunately, the building action in this book has managed to maintain momentum. The way the story is told allows the reader to actually feel the urgency that the characters in the book are experiencing as they feel they are losing ground to the Society.