The Storm of M

After a time skip we catch up with Lorna and everyone else now living on a mountain that serves as a safe place for all the cursed, now called the Gifted. We see how life is after the damage caused by the events in the first book and all is more or less stable.

But it's not long before things are ruined by an attack from Doctor von Rached setting off magical storms and awakening something that may destroy the world...

Although of course a story like this must go big and have world-threatening plot lines I much preferred the smaller personal battles and the X-men like struggle for acceptance the Gifted go through. Thankfully plenty of that is there too. The character work in this is top-notch and the highlight of it. Everyone is always being challenged and growing and it's done intelligently. Even Doctor von Rached finds himself not being so completely sociopathic... well relatively, of course.

Much like the first we have things that linger on and make the story go too slowly at times. In the first it was the experiment scenes, here the main characters are constantly dreaming and talking to other powerful magical beings who keep telling them over and over a battle is coming, be prepared, etc etc etc... This happens so many times and I was like... just get on with it!

And by the time the storyline finally does the book ends. It's a huge set up for what's to come in the third book. But as it is filled with excellent characters, still plenty of action, and a lot of new information on the lore it was a great read.