The second and final book in the series! Spoilers ahead!
After the Unnaturals' escape from the arena, they now have to find a way out of Lion's Head and into the wilderness, where they hope to live in peace. But this is is difficult when they're still being pursued. Meanwhile, the kids try to uncover what Mayor Eris is really up to.
This was a fine second installment. It's thankfully less miserable than the first (which was just so much suffering and animal abuse page after page). However, the book is still pretty bleak throughout. It didn't bother me as much as in the first book, though. And thankfully the ending is more positive.
The plot of this book was engaging, however the many plot beats and things happening all tying together into a bigger whole (especially in the kid's POV) is a bit convoluted sometimes. The Unnaturals' plot is fairly straightforward: Go into the Greenplains and live a peaceful life there. But the kids have to uncover this whole conspiracy and keep finding out piece of the puzzle and suspecting character A or character B of being sketchy and after a while it just got a bit much for me to keep up with, it was just very complicated and even when the puzzle got put together I was still pretty confused with the resolution. I feel that the whole conspiracy stuff the kids have to uncover could've been resolved in a less confusing and convoluted way.
I also didn't really get much attached to the new POV character of Kozmo in this book. When I first saw her on the cover, I was pretty hyped, because I love bats and foxes, so seeing a hybrid mutant of both is cool. But then the actual execution of the character had me a bit...eh, I don't know. I don't hate Kozmo or anything, but I just never really got attached to her the same way I did the main cast of book one. Kozmo is a rather passive character in the first half of this book, and by the time she becomes more proactive in the second half and integrates into the main cast I never really bought her relationship with the other characters. The book keeps telling us that these characters are friends and eventually like a family, but I never felt that, at least not with Kozmo. She just doesn't integrate into the main cast like I'd hoped. I feel that if she'd been more proactive or got involved with the main cast at an earlier point in the story, this mightn't have been an issue.
This also really isn't an issue with the characters from book one. I don't have trouble for a second buying the book one Unnaturals as a close-knit friend group. Especially Jazlyn and Castor play off of each other well and feel like besties. Runt is a new addition to the main cast here (he was present in book one, but as a minor character), but his interactions with the crew also felt genuine and like they worked. Comparing that to Kozmo's integration into the main cast, hers just falls flat.
The book also tries to pull some big twist regarding Francine near the end, but honestly it was kinda predictable and I figured it out pretty quickly. This one character goes mysteriously missing and another character of the same gender with no known identity suddenly joins the main cast and we know like nothing about them. Yeah, the idea that they're the same character or at least have something to do with each other is pretty predictable if you look at it in this context.
I know this book review has been largely negative so far, but I do need to stretch that I did overall like the book. Particularly the Unnaturals' POVs were interesting and the plot kept me engaged. I still liked Castor's POV chapters a lot and his relationships with the characters around him, particularly Jazlyn and Runt. It's not a bad book.
But it does have these issues that prevent me from fully enjoying it, and I do need to acknowledge these.
Rating: 3.5/5
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