So book 2 picks up right away from book 1. Callie is traumatized by her wings. I won’t lie, I find it really weird that she doesn’t want wings. I want wings. She can give me her wings.
I guess it’s because he’s 500 years old, but Des’ taste in band t-shirts always makes me roll my eyes. Playing Stairway to Heaven to be romantic is just cheesy. Sorry, but it’s true.
So Des decides he’s going to teach her how to use her wings, which is absolutely the correct call, but I very much balk at the idea that it only takes an afternoon. They are whole new limbs, she should be tripping over them for weeks. I’ve had all my limbs for decades, I still manage to smack myself in the teeth with one every once in a while. I know this is a fairy story with immortal creatures and sirens and magic, but this is the kind of detail that jars me out of my suspension of disbelief.
We finally find out why Temper is so powerful – she’s a sorceress, and like Callie, she has to fight her destructive power to keep it under control. (I immediately thought of the scene from Suicide Squad where the Enchantress takes June’s hand and flips it over and she’s now in charge of the host body.) Two people in one body is a repeating theme in these stories, and I feel like they should have twigged faster that Karnon was hosting two minds. It was also the first place my brain went to when Callie recognized Janus – she recognizes him as the person who kidnapped her and he denies it. It feels like she only starts to figure out it’s a possibility when Des is the one who has a double.
So one of the sequences I found really interesting was when Des tells Callie to get her siren out for her introduction to the rulers of Flora. I get that humans are slaves in Flora, but it also seems that everybody is really surprised and unsettled by Callie’s powers. Meanwhile, back in the human realm, Callie went to a school specifically for humans with supernatural powers, so while humans with power are definitely a minority, they can’t be that uncommon. So how is it that the fae never tried to imprison a supernatural before, even by accident? Or maybe they have and just don’t talk about it. “What ever happened to Lord Bruno?” “Nobody talks about Bruno.”
I had a theory that Janus was also possessed by the Thief of Souls, just like Karnon was. So his body kidnapped Callie, but it was somebody else driving at the time. I also wondered if that was the reason the soldiers claimed they saw Des right before people disappeared – if he was also being piloted like a jaeger while he slept. The reveal that Des’ father was still alive ruined that theory, but I’m still intrigued to know if Janus was being possessed.
The story line with the Green Man was SO CREEPY. And I genuinely don’t understand how Mara didn’t notice. Wouldn’t his personality change? Why couldn’t she tell through the bond?
I have SO Many questions and I’m hoping that at least some of them will be answered by the next book.