The Not a Book Club Club discussion

This discussion covers from Chapter 19 to the end of the book, so I guess we can talk about the whole book here!

No spoiler tags required. Though it would be highly appreciated if you Uncheck Add to my Update Feed to avoid accidentally spoiling this for your friends.

Well, that was a fun read.

About halfway through the first book, I started wondering if Janus would end up being the true villain, in the end. I'm glad that at least some of the characters are wondering about that too.

I enjoyed the book a lot, although I thought the battles wrapped up a bit too neatly (plus I wanted to see more about the demons). Unlike Sky, I didn't wonder about Janus, but maybe I should have.

Finished it today. Though not as gripping as the first book it was nevertheless very entertaining. The setup for the next book was really well done, very excited for next year.

I agree that Janus is a potential villain. We know almost nothing about him or his motivations at this point.

I found this book to be slow at the start, but once things were setup it moved along pretty well and I rather enjoyed it.

More political and less action than book 1.

My Review

So I mentioned this in the general thread that Mr. Wexler was open to answering questions again if anyone is interested. It doesn't seem like we have as big of a crowd/as much discussion as we did for book 1 though.

Ha that was a great review!

Thanks. Broke away from my usual format to try something different. The idea for a commercial came to me while I was riding my bike and finishing it up.

I wasn't sure if it would come out alright or not, but I think it worked to still get what I wanted to across while sticking to the theme.

I have just finished this book and thoroughly enjoyed it. This has to be one of the best series i have read for a while. Can not wait for the other 3 books.
I love the characters, setting, and mysteries that are being presented to me. Janus is the only one that i have a slight issue with - a little too confident in his abilities - but this is minor.
Now to wait until July next year for Price of Valor.

Damn that was an ending. This book was headed to a straight 4 stars, a quick, really enjoyable read but I never found it as compelling as TTN. That battle has bumped it to 4.5 and I'm trying to decide which way to round it. After receiving a small amount of criticism for his focus on military stuff in the last one Wexler obviously had a big focus on more traditional fantasy stuff in this one but he always had a big battle scene in his locker. imo he's one of the best writers of battle-scenes I've read (Cornwell also deserving a mention).

I kind of felt the battle was unnecessary though. The 'bad guys' were Vordanai soldiers and they seemed to genuinely want to restore Raesinia to the throne and stop an evil rebellion. Surely if Raesinia had just gone to talk to them the entire battle could have been avoided? Especially since the minister of war never seemed to like Orlanko in the first place. Anyway, even if the battle was unnecessary it was awesome.

Janus as the main villain is a really interesting prospect. tbh I don't think he'd be the 'real' villain however this plays out. I mean did you guys see how Orlanko and the Church communicated? That shit was messed up. I am still really intrigued by Janus' motivations. On one hand he's one of my favourite characters so I want to him to be a 'good guy' on the other hand I love complex, morally ambiguous villains and it would be really interesting if Janus wound up in that role.

It'll be interesting to see how things play out in the next book. This one was pretty different from the first in the series, but I enjoyed both! It would certainly be interesting if Janus turns out to be the villain. But it would surprise me.