I adored Daughter of the Forest, and since I know a lot of people consider Son of the Shadows to be the best of the Sevenwaters trilogy I was prepared to be blown away. At first I was. The heroine, Liadan, is Sorcha's youngest daughter, so from the first page it was wonderful to visit Sorcha and Red and see them as the happy couple and loving, supportive parents that they were so clearly going to become. Liadan is wonderful, and her story kicks into gear when she's kidnapped by a band of mercenaries for her healing skills. This whole section of the book completely stole my heart.

Mariller weaves elements of fairy tales into her books, and for a while I felt like I'd been transported into Neverneverland, and Liadan was Wendy among the Lost Boys - only, this time, Wendy and Peter Pan get to hook up. The Painted Man, Bran, is half-savage, damaged but infinitely competent and self-controlled. He's so easy to fall in love with and root for.

But here's the thing. I'm not the kind of person who intentionally buys books that will have me in tears over and over again (once is fine, more than that and I start to feel exploited and/or masochistic), and Son of the Shadows made me cry and cry and cry. Once Liadan goes home to Sevenwaters, she and Bran don't get to see one another very often so the fun romantic elements become less prominent. Instead, we get one heartbreak after another. A lot of people die in Son of the Shadows. A lot of people suffer terribly at the hands of others. A lot of people are really, really sad.

In Daughter of the Forest, Sorcha had a painful task and it was vividly described, but she pursued it out of love. And the love between Sorcha and Red was strongest, and most poignant, during Sorcha's darkest hours, when she needed it most. Liadan has no task, but she is surrounded by violent people. Bran is himself a very violent man who has committed many murders, and maybe just to make him look a little bit better by contrast, a lot of other male characters in the novel are also revealed as hardened killers. Son of the Shadows is a LOT bloodier than the first book, and there's a lot of collateral damage. There's a lot of torture and rape and cruelty and theft. It just got really hard for me to read, because I knew that every time I turned the page as likely as not I would encounter some new painful event that would make me cry again.

So Son of the Shadows is beautifully written, and painful as it was I could hardly put it down. But I don't think you could pay me to read it again. It's good, and I'd recommend it, but with a pretty strong caveat: if you are the type of person who cries when you read sad things, keep a box of tissues handy and don't take this book onto the subway.