Note: The title of this book has been translated into English by me for the reading comprehension of this blog's viewers as the book itself isn't available in English (yet). The original title reads De bende van de Witte Veer.
The second and as of now last installment in the Raveleijn duology. Unlike the first book, this one is not directly tied to the parkshow or TV series. Some elements of this book do return in the parkshow (such as Samira having a brother named Jarno) but other than that it's just pretty much a sequel that doesn't have a direct counterpart to the TV or parkshow. Anyways, let's dive in. Spoilers ahead!
A few years after the five siblings' first journey into Raveleijn, things are getting bad at the other side of the gate. Wolf-headed minions of a terrible villain are spreading fear amongst the citizens of Raveleijn, and everything and everyone is slowly but surely turning to stone. Halina and Samira plan on calling upon the legendary Five once more to save the magical realm.
I honestly think this one is actually a bit weaker than the first. I'm not sure if that's just my nostalgia for the TV/parkshow, or if I think it's actually objectively worse than the first. It's not a huge difference, but I definitely liked this one less.
There definitely are some aspects I like better, though. For one, this book actually switches the POV around rather than just having us be stuck reading Thomas' constantly. I believe the original may have switched POVs occasionally, but 90% of it was read through Thomas', so it made for a nice change of pace to get more insight into the inner workings of characters like Joost, Samira, Maurits and Halina.
I also like the different conflict. It would've been really easy to just have another tyrant try to take over Raveleijn in pretty much the same fashion as Penegrinus did in book one, but the conflict is quite different, with the petrification of the realm and its citizens slowly killing everything.
That said, yeah, our main villain is still Peregrinus. He returns in a different form and does different stuff from the first book, but he's still a very bland villain I didn't care for. They didn't give him an extra backstory or interesting interactions with the main characters in this, which were my complaints with the first book as well.
But I was actually glad that there was a brief red herring in this book. One of the council members of Halina and Grafhart is proven to be a traitor, and the writing leads everyone on to believe it's Erian, but in the climax it's actually proven that Joseph, the one who wasn't build up as an antagonist at all, was in cahoots with Peregrinus. It's not an amazing twist, but it's at least a twist. In book one, Bertram was build up to be a villain from his first introduction. Here, Erian seems like the obvious villain, but it's revealed that in the end he's just a charismatic good guy with some weird mannerisms that make him seem evil.
The Five also did have a bit more personality in this. Again, not an amazing amount, and most of it once more goes to Thomas and Joost, but overall they do have more to them. Especially Maurits got his own POV scenes when he got none before, so that was interesting. However, my complaint regarding the twins still holds ground. While they are different from in the first book (they have become goth witches of some kind), they still are pretty much interchangeable character wise. I couldn't tell the two of them apart if I had to. It'd have been interesting if one of them had perhaps become a goth while the other would've remained the traditional "girly girl" stereotype, so we could see the duality, but right now they're still just treated as a single character split into two, pretty much. Also, the dog still does nothing. I really don't see the point of having him here.
One thing that also kind of confused me was Samira having a brother. I honestly have no memory of Samuel having another child in the first book, yet now we're suddenly supposed to buy that Samira has one. Maybe he was brought up briefly in book one and I somehow missed it, that's a possibility, but I honestly do not remember him, so I have a feeling they added him after the fact. I also don't really know what his purpose is, he doesn't really do anything that Samira couldn't have done on her own and he doesn't do anything by himself exactly, either.
The book's ending is one I'm kind of mixed about. I mean, on the one hand, I totally get Thomas staying in Raveleijn with Samira. But on the other hand, how the hell are the other four going to explain that to their parents? They can't exactly be like "hey, our brother is in a parallel dimension now where he became heir to the throne". Wouldn't their parents be worried sick about one of their children suddenly vanishing? Sure, he could visit occasionally, but who is to say that something wouldn't fuck with the entrance gates to Raveleijn again? That way he'd be stuck on either side. And by the time he's formerly crowned ruler of the county, he'll be so busy that he probably won't have time to visit anymore.
I mean, I do like the concept of the ending, staying in the magical realm rather than returning to oh-so-mundane current life where one doesn't fit in. If I were to be transported to Raveleijn or Narnia or whatever, I know I'd for sure want to stay for quite a while at least. But the book just doesn't really address at all the fact that Thomas has a life outside of Raveleijn. He has two parents who love him to death and worry for him, he has four siblings and a pet dog who all care for him, he has an entire future in the "real" world ahead of him, and instead he just literally leaves it behind without a care. If there had been a bit more consideration thrown into the mix, I could've easily forgiven this.
Maybe Thomas goes back to the "real" world and figures out that he really just doesn't belong there, and then takes Halina and Grafhart up on their offer to become next in line for the throne. But right now, before even returning, he pretty much turns to his siblings and is like "Oh, by the way, I'm becoming a prince now, marrying Samira and not coming back with you." It just feels rushed and like it wasn't fully thought through.
It was overall a pretty decent book, but it just doesn't really live up to the first. It had some good elements, but just feels overall weaker.
Rating: 3/5
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