Stormheart #2

This is the second book in a series. My review will contain no spoilers for this one, but may inadvertently spoil the first book. You can read my review of book one here. If you don’t want the first book spoiled stop reading now, you have been warned.

Rage by Cora Carmack

Publication Date: August 27, 2019

Summary from NetGalley:

Princess or adventurer.

Duty or freedom.

Her Kingdom or the storm hunter she loves.

If Aurora knows anything, it’s that choices have consequences. To set things right, she joins a growing revolution on the streets of Pavan.

In disguise as the rebel Roar, she puts her knowledge of the palace to use to aid the rebellion. But the Rage season is at its peak and not a day passes without the skies raining down destruction. Yet these storms are different…they churn with darkness, and attack with a will that’s desperate and violent.

This feels like more than rage.

It feels like war.

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ARC provided by Macmillan/Tor via NetGalley for an honest review.

Did you know that this was going to be a trilogy or maybe more? Well I certainly didn’t, but that is ok, because I certainly wasn’t ready to say goodbye to this world quite yet. The second installment to this series was excellent and everything I wanted it to be. There was some great action, some plot twists that I did not entirely see coming, and some background on the Stormlord.

The book starts off pretty much from where the first one left off. Roar has arrived back home to find everything in chaos. But I had to admire how well she handled things. She continues to be very strong and level headed in a time of crises, but she also makes some bad decisions and gets herself into trouble because of it. Her confession to Locke\Kiran about who she really was went about as well as I thought it would go. They are both such strong willed people, and I did worry for a bit about their relationship, but after everything they have been through I continue to hope that it will all work out in the end.

The rest of the crew is back and we get to learn a bit more about each of them. We get to see and hear more from Sly in this book. She was not as involved with Roar in the last one, but she really steps up when it was needed. Duke also has a bit more added to his story. I still really like him and enjoyed his character development. Nova and Jinx end up becoming friends, which was awesome as it allowed us to learn more about how their magic works.

I still haven’t decided if Prince Cassius is a good guy or a bad one, he is definitely better than his father and brother, but I think by the end he will prove himself to Roar to be a better person than we think.

The Stormlord, on the other hand is just plain crazy. We get a lot more about his history and how he came to be who he is. So he does get a bit of a sympathy vote from me, but we don’t yet know everything. He had a lot of trauma in his life which shaped his personality, but still, not sure I can hold out for his redemption. Hopefully there will be more about his past in the next book as well.

I continue to really enjoy the world that has been created here. The idea that storms have souls and that you can control them with magic is fascinating. And the social structure that developed around this concept is also very interesting. I am very interested in seeing how the different types of magic end up either helping or hurting each other.

This book was certainly worth the wait. I just hope that the next one will be coming out soon.