Book Review: The Battle of the Wolves by Henri Loevenbruck (The Moïra #2)

 

Note: The title of this book and series have been translated into English by me for the reading comprehension of this blog's viewers. The original title reads La Guerre des Loups  from the La Moïra trilogy.

We return to the world of Aléa and Imala in this second installment! Let's hope it improved over the first! Spoilers ahead.

The war between the five counties of Gaelia has begun. Aléa is slowly starting to accept the powers that come with being the Samildanach, all the while she and her friends are still fugitives for the many people hunting them down in look of obtaining her, and thus her powers as well.

I think I overall enjoyed this book about as much as the first. It had a few good things about them, but a few not-so-good ones as well.

The characters are surely a bit better. Aléa is finally developing more as a main character, becoming extremely cocky and self-certain now that she knows she's the most powerful person in Gaelia (sans maybe Maolmórdha). The other characters I liked before, such as Mjolln, Faith and Galiad are still great as well. We also got a look into Amine, who it turns out may be more devious than appears at first sight. One thing I disliked, though, is how Imala pretty much took a backseat for nearly the entire book. 

The whole "wolves" aspect of this trilogy is heavily advertised on the covers, and even in the series title of the Dutch translation, yet the wolves do so little. Book 1 gave us Imala's backstory but in book 2 she became just an errand wolf and that's it. Sure, the wolves show up during the climax to defeat the evil armies, but they vanish just as quickly as they appear. You'd really expect they'd have more overall to do in the story.

The amount of exposition dumps has thankfully been lessened, however the constant POV-shifting without clear start of each new perspective is still prevalent. 

I also had a bit of a hard time keeping up with all the politics during this book. Book one had a lot of it, but it was still manageable, but in book two we are shown so many different political POVs, locations and characters that I honestly got a bit lost. 

So, yeah, I guess I do consider it an improvement over the first, but not big enough to warrant an extra (half) star. I look forward to the third book, whatever it may bring.

Rating: 3/5