CBR18 BINGO: Season (the characters live and travel to places that are only ever 1 season)
I liked this book quite a bit more than the first one. I was engaged the whole way through and never felt like it could stand to be shorter. It turns out there are immortal creatures that even daeyari are afraid of. Antal’s father Avroz enlists Antal to help track down one that has been hunting in the Season-Locked Planes, especially Antal’s territory. Fi joins the hunt, and chapters are from both her and Antal’s POVs.
Avroz is against Fi joining. Avroz is also the worst. He is an emotionally abusive, manipulative, and controlling father, and of course shares old-fashioned daeyari views on the inferiority of humans (e.g., calling Fi a “pet”). There is an author’s note about this, as family trauma is a significant theme of the book, and I thought it was handled well. We also get to meet some other characters from Antal’s past, and I really came to like them.
The book is funny sometimes, mainly because of Fi and the side character Syvr. That said, I maintain my complaint from the first book that while the chapter titles are amusing (e.g., “So, This Place Sucks), they don’t always seem to fit tonally with some of the violence and life-or-death situations that occur. There were also some word choices that sometimes stood out as a bit jarring.
Minor complaints aside, this was great. There were times it was really hard to put down, and I was happy with how it wrapped up. 4.5 stars.
Thank you to NetGalley and Orbit Books for the e-ARC. All opinions are my own.
