The Crown of Embers

Today’s post is on The Crown of Embers by Rae Carson. It is the second book in her Fire and Thorns series. It is 410 pages long and is published by Greenwillow Books. The cover is a dark blue with stars at the top and ice on the bottom; in the center there is her godstone with Elisa’s profile in it. The intended reader young adult but if you read and enjoyed the first one read this one too. There is talk of sexuality but no sex, no language and the violence is less than the first book. It is told, like the first novel, from first person point of Elisa. There Be Spoilers Ahead.

From the dust jacket- She does not know what awaits her at the enemy’s gate. Elisa is a hero. She led her people to victory over a terrifying sorcerous army. Her place as the country’s ruler should be secure. But it isn’t.
Her enemies come at her like ghosts in a dream, from foreign realms and even from within her own court. And her destiny as the chosen one has not yet been fulfilled.
To conquer the power she needs, once and for all, Elisa must follow a trail of long-forgotten- and forbidden- clues, from the deep, hidden catacombs of her own city to the treacherous seas. With her go a one-eyes spy, a traitor, and the man whom- despite everything- she is falling in love with.
If she’s lucky, she will return from the journey. But there will be a cost.

Review- I was not sure that I was going to read this book. I was okay with the first one but so many of my friends have it and are just crazy about this series that I decided that I would read it. It is not bad; it is a good second book. The plot goes in an interesting way. The characters grow from beginning to end. And unlike the first one I can say that I will read the last novel in the trilogy. The writing is good, the dialogue is okay. I know that I am a dialogue person, I love to read and watch how the characters interact with each other. But the dialogue is just okay. Nothing really ground breaking going on here. I feel that Elisa moves back from the ending of the first book back to the timid person she was at the start. Most of the book is about her getting the courage to who her country needs her to be. I wonder why Carson felt the need to do this instead of moving Elisa into being who she was posed to be at the end of the first novel but she’s the writer. So the first half of the book was hard for me to read but the second half better. Elisa starts to travel and is not afraid of what she needs to be. Read it for the second half of the story and so that you can read the third in the series and understand what is going on of course.

I give this one Four stars out of Five. I get nothing for my review and I borrowed this book from my local library.