The Memory of Fire by Callie BatesMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
I received a free e-copy of this book from NetGalley for review purposes.
I did read the first book in this series, The Waking Land, and enjoyed that so was excited to read this one. This book was also pretty great, although I admit I wanted to know what the heck was going on with Elanna and Sophie while Jahan was doing his thing. Jahan's voice was refreshing, although he was pretty traumatized by his upbringing and has a lot of emotional issues. His problems trusting people and letting them in caused him a lot of trouble in this book, much of which probably could have been avoided if he'd only thought things through before acting.
Some of the characters' motives were extremely unclear through the entire book. It was difficult to tell who the reader could trust. This can be a great thing, especially for mysteries, but in fantasy I feel like there needs to be some solid ground that the main character can rely on. The only person I felt was true the entire way was Jahan's old friend from school. Even Leontius was a bit of a dishrag for much of the story.
Admittedly I didn't remember much about the relationships from the first book, so this was like starting over for me. I felt like some of the relationships weren't written the same way, like I don't remember Jahan being so insecure with Elanna (although he very well may have been), and I don't remember reference to Leontius being so angry at Jahan (but I'm sure it was there).
Overall this was pretty well-written. I thought there were way too many angles for me to keep track of, and character motives were a bit muddled, but I'm looking forward to book 3 and seeing how Jahan and Elanna manage to defeat the threat to Sophie's kingdom.
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