Lord of the White Hell, Book 2

Lord of the White Hell is character-driven fantasy with some romance and focus on social structures. It had me captivated from start to finish and is easily one of my favorite books I've read so far this year.

Full Review

First of all, I've got to say that I just adore Kiram and Javier together. I love their relationship and what they're like together. Also, there are some great secondary characters - specifically Nestor. He's surprisingly awesome. The only slight complaint I have is that most of this story is based around a mystery. A mystery that I knew the who and how of in the first quarter of the first book (I'm still not completely sure as to the why...) and every single clue all pointed to the culprit. To me, this is the problem with books that rely so heavily on a mystery. I will say, the author gives out plenty of clues and I loved the honest reactions when the characters realized what happened. I just can't - for the life of me - figure out what took Kiram so long to figure it out. And, you know, he really didn't. The solution was just dumped on his lap. Ah, well. I still loved the book and am very excited to read more by this author.

Liked it a lot, didn't quite love it. Not sure it was worth 700 pages to get to the bittersweet ending (Kiram and Javier are definitely together, but they are forced to live in exile, away from friends and family). Proud, tormented heroes aren't really my catnip, but Javier redeems himself from a fair amount of asshole behavior in part 1, and Kiram is just wonderful from start to finish. The relationships between the Hellions are some of the best parts of the book, and I appreciated especially how Kiram and Nestor are finally able to tell each other how much their friendship means (in an appropriately male way of course). Some of the plotting seemed odd - I wish we had seen Javier's training with Alizadeh, and the abrupt way that Kiram learns the identity of the bad guy felt like a cop out - but the exploration of the different cultures and belief systems was fascinating. Not sure I am ready to jump into the next two books ([b:Champion of the Scarlet Wolf, Book One 19455351 Champion of the Scarlet Wolf, Book One (Champion of the Scarlet Wolf, #1) Ginn Hale https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1405289342l/19455351.SY75.jpg 27542593]) because they are a significant time investment, but I'll keep them on a list of books I would like to read on vacation.