Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for this eARC in exchange for my honest review.
When I was approved for this title, I had not realized that it was part of a series. I went through a lot of trouble to order the first book Children of Icarus and read it prior to this one. You can find my review of the first book here. Suffice to say, I did not enjoy the first book. However, I was determined to not let my previous experience cloud my judgement with this next installment. Here are my thoughts:
Summary (Goodreads): Six months alone in the labyrinth has made her strong. But the search for the exit means gambling on an old ‘friend’ and going against everything she’s been taught to survive. You know the labyrinth will have yet more horrors lurking in its depths. You’ve learned few people can be trusted. But freedom is tantalizingly close. Are you ready to take the risk?
This book is an improvement from the first novel. But not by much. I still didn’t love this story as much as I had hoped. NB: you will definitely not understand this book if you haven’t read the first novel in the series!
The main character – who was still Nameless – wasn’t as irritating in this book as she was in the last. She came into her abilities a lot more in this novel so I wasn’t as mad when reading. But there were so many new characters that were involved and they all were just so flat and one-dimensional that it was hard to tell them apart. I had a tough time telling who was an ally and who was an enemy because they all sounded the same.
There was less violence in this story but it was still unnecessarily violent and graphic at times. Now, I love gore but even I had to say that there was too much of it in this series – and that’s saying something! I also thought that the book was unnecessarily long. It could easily have been a good 100 pages shorter, without losing any plot. Maybe that’s because not much happens in the story. I kept wondering when things would get going but it never really did. I definitely felt that this novel suffered from second-book-syndrome in that it was just filler until the next book came out.
I also felt that there just weren’t enough questions answered. The first novel left me with a lot of questions and I was hoping this one would provide some answers. Instead, it presented more questions. The story also lacked a solid backstory. I wanted to know more about how things got to be the way they were but that didn’t really happen, which was disappointing. I wanted more mythology and more explanations about mythology for those people who perhaps weren’t as familiar with mythology. This was definitely lacking in both books in this series.
Overall, this novel, while an improvement from the first in the series, was still not what I wanted or expected. Since it has gotten better, I’m going to give it a 2/5 stars. But I don’t think I’m going to be sticking to this series.
Happy reading ~