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 Le Tredici Spade #2: Il Segreto della Fenice.
The fantasy adventure continues. Spoilers ahead.
Dran, Ondine, Aldar and Lune continue on their quest to find the Thirteen Swords and defeat the evil powers attacking the Kingdom of Fantasy. This time, they will have to travel to the desert for their mission. Here, they meet new characters and have to fight against the evil desert raiders and their snake mounts.
Gosh, this book is boring. It was such a slog to get through because I kept wanting to put it down to read other, better books. It's not offensively bad or anything, but it's overall so uninteresting and generic and bland that I legit didn't care for any of this.
The main characters are still very bland and aside from one or two minor personality quirks all feel like one and the same. They don't have interesting backstories or motivations of mannerisms or whatever that set them apart. Ondine in the last book at least had an okay arc of learning to stand up for herself, but Dran in this book felt so forgettable I kept having a hard time remembering that he's supposed to be the main character this time around.
The side characters like Amir and Princess Jasmine (no, not the Disney one) are slightly more interesting but they don't have a huge role to play. The twins are also interesting, but once again they're mostly on the sidelines having others do their dirty work for them. I kept hoping that they would show their powers or something and step into the limelight as the villains, but instead they're still being secretive and manipulating things behind the scenes. And stuff like that worked in book one, but by now it's getting pretty old. I feel we'd get a lot more of a sense of danger around these characters if they actually did their evil deeds themselves instead of having their minions do their dirty work.
The world-building of the desert and the various peoples and locations we come across is mildly interesting, but it's nothing much and also still pretty generic as far as fantasy goes.
The biggest crime this book commits though is just being boring, especially the first two thirds. Because I don't care much about these characters or this world, I care very little about what happens to them. I feel that, if the author had made the characters more distinct and unique, I'd actually have something to latch onto. But right now there is so little of substance here. The book is mildly more interesting in the last third, but again there is just so little to latch onto here that I just do not care.
Not a fan of this series so far. There's two more books to go, who knows, maybe those will surprise me. But I don't have high hopes.
Rating: 2/5
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