Second book in the trilogy! Spoilers ahead!
Now the only girl apprentice-hunter, Ottilie is determined to succeed and graduate to the next level, as well as get a high score when it comes to slaying dredretches. However, when mysterious things happen at Fiori and it appears that someone is letting in the monsters, Ottilie and her friends are determined to train the other girls at the Fort to defend themselves and unmask the culprit, which many of them presume to be a witch.
I honestly liked this one even more than the last, which already got a good rating. My main gripe with that book was that I wasn't fully immersed into the world (yet), but that's definitely fixed here as we learn more about the world, the lore and the conspiracies of Narroway and its world. I won't go in-depth on it here, but I liked the world a whole lot more after this one.
Also: the characters! A lot of them grew on me, even ones I didn't initially like or care for. I already liked Ottilie, Gully, Skip, Alba, Montie and others, but this book really made Bill, Maeve and heck, even Gracie grow on me.
Bill is definitely one of my favorites now because we finally have somewhat of an explanation on who and what he is, and it's some really interesting lore. I always just thought he was a human that was magically altered or had a medical condition causing him to grow fur and horns, but here it's revealed that he's actually a rare juvenile creature that shares a collective hive-mind with his species, which is the reason for him acting slightly scatterbrained and often forgetting things. Maeve goes from being an outright antagonist to being a pretty strong ally of the main characters and I love how Ottilie, despite disliking her and presuming she is a witch, will still stick up for her. Gracie is more of a villainous character who goes through a corruption arc here, but despite that she does still have some genuine moments and she isn't all-evil or anything. As for Leo...I do like him, but in the "he's an asshole with a heart of gold"-kind of way. He is generally kind but also often acts too arrogant and has some lingering sexism even after mentoring Ottilie, but he'll also admit it when he's wrong and try to do better. Just a very flawed but ultimately likable character for me.
There is one element of this book I wasn't as into: the romances. It is heavily implied that Scoot has a major crush on Ottilie in this book, but Ottilie herself only has eyes for Ned, one of the trainers. I honestly don't know how to feel about this. Aside from the romance adding nothing to the story other than some brief interpersonal conflicts, and I do like the idea of Scoot and Ottilie being together, pairing her with Ned seems, in this book at least, a bit odd. He's one of the trainers and she's an apprentice hunter (albeit not his), so it would be kind of a power imbalance even though obviously there's not that large an age gap between the two. Now that Ottilie is ranked equally to him at the end of the book it's a bit less weird, but it still doesn't really work for me.
Another gripe of mine was the deaths. There are a few deaths in this book, and there were a few in the first, but literally none of them are even remotely major characters. It feels like the author just created these characters for the sake of killing them off, as they were never major and only had a few scenes to their name tops. If the author really wanted the deaths to make an impact, I'd recommend (sad as it is) to kill off some characters Ottilie is close to, or at least have a major role in the story. Right now it's mostly random young hunters that keep dying which is obviously sad but since we never got to know these characters well, it doesn't leave much of an impact. I do hope this gets fixed in the last book, as they seem to be building up to a war.
An element I liked however: Ottilie graduating, becoming a full hunter, and getting her own wingerslinks. Of course, in trying to mock her, the head of the wingerslinkses gives her an elderly and nearly-untamed beast, and I like how Ottilie has to actually go out of her way to bond with it. It would've been easy to go the route of "they have a special connection" or even worse, something like "a woman's touch calms down the beast". But nope, Nox the wingerslinks is just kind of an grouchy old asshole and Ottilie has to take her time to get to know her (with some help of Bill, who can somewhat understand animals) and bond with her. And they do make for a strong team once they've finally bonded. It just takes time and I'm glad that it wasn't treated like there was some magical way to get Nox to trust Ottilie faster.
The villain of the book was also interesting and we now finally know who is behind the curse and all the dredretches. Worse yet, she's corrupted Gracia and taken Ned and Bill prisoner, with her seeming to have bigger plans for the latter. Bill is currently probably my favorite character out of the bunch, so I really hope he turns out okay. They're also building up to a big war for the final book, which I'm definitely interested in seeing since it has been built up very well and the idea of an army of teenagers having to face a ginormous horde of monsters is just...terrifying.
Overall a step above the first book. I hope the last book also sticks the landing, leading to an overall very good trilogy.
Rating: 4/5
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