Book Review: Catalysts by F.J. Thornburg (The Tales From Veynekan #2)

 

Took me a while to get to this one. Ah well, better late than never.

With the Guardian on the loose and seeking to destroy all of Veynekan. Flossie and Hamara set out on a quest to find the Catalysts, shards containing magic which might aid them in their journey to stop the Guardian.

Overall I'd consider this a pretty solid second installment. Whether I like it more than the first I can't really say because it has been a while since I read the first book, but this one was a solid followup nonetheless.

What really made this book for me was our two main characters, Flossie and Hamara, as well as the tritagonist Salkele. These three are just all solid characters and I really loved how they played off of one another. This trio has genuine chemistry in their interactions and I love it when a group or characters can do that. This made this book a joy to read.

The journey the characters go on is also interesting enough to keep me engaged, though one or two times I did feel that the story was a tad fast-paced. Nothing awful or distracting or anything, but there were a few moments that went by quicker than I'd expected.

One point I do want to bring up is that I think the blurb kinda got my expectations up for more Obsidian, Ben and Finiir when they're barely in this book. I think like, four chapters at most. Which did make me sad because they were all very major characters last book and I wanted to know how their journey continued, but we barely got anything from their POV this book, despite the blurb mentioning their quest. Despite that, this is very much the Flossie and Hamara Show, with about 80-90% of chapters being from their POVs. So if you were hoping for more Obsidian, Ben an Finiir, don't set your hopes too high, because you might be disappointed.

I also spotted a few errors in stuff like punctuation (like a missing period at the end of a sentence), so I do think this book could've done with another edit to really get rid of those, but since it was very minor I won't hold it against the book much.

But overall, for what we did get, it's a solid book and I do recommend it. I look forward to book three when that drops.

Rating: 4/5