The Restorer was one of those books that snuck up on me. It wasn't until I'd recommended it a couple of times to other people that I realized how much I'd liked it myself. I was eager to pick up the sequel and the first few pages brought me right back into Amelia Gray's world. I sank right into the book's vivid setting and gloriously creepy Southern Gothic atmosphere.

In THE KINGDOM, Amelia has been hired onto a new project. She's to restore Thorngate cemetery in isolated, decaying Asher Falls, a town where everyone and everything is as terrifying as possible. The arrogant statues in the cemetery seem to watch her. Her employer is a suspiciously beautiful witch whose apparent age changes from moment to moment by a factor of decades. The local patriarch is an evil old man in a wheelchair and even the schoolchildren have ulterior motives.

Amelia's first friend in Asher Falls is a stray dog. I like a good pet character and Amelia's kindness toward Angus reflects well on her, but Stevens repeatedly uses Angus to make Amelia do stupid things. Angus is supposed to be a guard dog, but he's always being nabbed or charging off into dangerous situations, then howling or whimpering for help.

The first time Amelia almost dies chasing after Angus, I was completely on board. She can't predict what's coming, she doesn't want the creature to suffer, so of course she's going to go after him. The third or fourth times, not so much. Angus may be sweet and loyal, but he's not a free pass for lazy plotting.

Unfortunately, this dog thing is symptomatic of how THE KINGDOM unravels. While Amelia is feeling out her new environment, the book is really strong. A lot of paranormal/UF books are about figuring out the rules of an alternate reality and then mastering them. In the Graveyard Queen books, the "other side" is too powerful, too overwhelming to ever understand or master. That's really powerful and chilling.

But as the threats Amelia faces grow more and more concrete, her reasons for sticking around to face them grow more and more vague. At first, the danger comes from (scary) ghosts and a (scary) "evil" atmosphere that hangs over the town, and Amelia is determined to finish a job she's contracted to do, for which she will be paid in cash money.

By the end, she is dodging pretty frequent murder attempts and sticks around because she has "feelings" - she gets a "feeling" that she needs to go to a certain place where a murderer is waiting with an axe, for example. MUCH harder to understand.

In short, THE KINGDOM is a wobbly second installment in the Graveyard Queen trilogy. I wavered between three and four stars on this one, because the book is on the weak side, but I'm curious to see whether or not Stevens will manage to stick the landing with THE PROPHET. So I'm rounding up to four, with my fingers crossed.