Jonathan Wylie (1)

It's got princes, a good wizard, a prophecy, a feisty princess, a mystical sword, outlaws, and an evil sorceress who takes over the kingdom.
Need I say more?
It's a quick read, fairly inoffensive, even mildly entertaining. But there are absolutely no original twists to the basic 'fantasy' story here. And the authors' (Wylie is a pseudonym for a husband/wife team) insistence on being relentlessly lighthearted in tone is occasionally disturbing. (Normally, people don't keep on merrily trucking along, cracking jokes and saying, "well, we've got to move on" directly after their betrothed/brother/friend/etc is killed.) The characters have no depth of emotional involvement - and neither will the reader. I probably won't remember anything that happened in this book shortly.… (mais)

While I thought the first book in this trilogy was rather extraordinarily bad, in this sequel, the team-that-is-Jonathan-Wylie is back in stride. While certainly not exceptional literature, this is a perfectly acceptable fantasy adventure.
In the island nation of Ark, it's a generation later. The evil sorceress Amarino was defeated by King Mark, but now her daughters are coming of age, and a long-term plan of evil magic may come to fruition. It's Prince Luke's turn to save the land... but he seems to have fallen in love with one of Amarino's daughters...
Nothing too deep or challenging here, and a lot of the plot elements could be better thought-out or explained, but an entertaining-enough book.… (mais)