An excellent book. Made for a great family read-a-loud. One thing to note, Richard Paul Evans promoted this series as one that was supposed to be as action-packed as other popular young adult books such as Harry Potter and Hunger Games, but without being as dark and demented. I would say that the first book of the series lived up to that claim, but this second book exposed much more of the villian in this story and was much darker. Some of the death scenes were especially gruesome and might be traumatic for a younger reader. While not being as dark and traumatic as say the Hunger Games, I don't think it lives up to the advertizing.

False advertizing aside, the book was exciting, fun to read, and hard to put down.

The ending is a complete cliff-hanger leaving you frothing at the mount for the next installment of the series.