Spectyr (Book of the Order, #2) in SOS: Serious Overload of Series

Sep 09, 2013 Patrick rated it really liked it

Shelves: book-series, reviewed

While Geist was an interesting debut for a new urban fantasy series, I felt like Spectyr meets and surpasses the original. While I found Geist to be a solid entry in the billions of monster-slaying-women type of urban fantasy titles out there, Spectyr felt like it upped the stakes a little. It was more entertaining, enjoyable and complex than it's predecessor.

The story of Spectyr interweaves several plots at once, all of which focus on the main characters. The main storyline has to do with the ' While Geist was an interesting debut for a new urban fantasy series, I felt like Spectyr meets and surpasses the original. While I found Geist to be a solid entry in the billions of monster-slaying-women type of urban fantasy titles out there, Spectyr felt like it upped the stakes a little. It was more entertaining, enjoyable and complex than it's predecessor.

The story of Spectyr interweaves several plots at once, all of which focus on the main characters. The main storyline has to do with the 'little god' Hatipai, whose fanatical devotee, Zofiya, is trying to bring about. Of course, this idea doesn't sit well with Sorcha, who happens to be somewhat contemptuous of religious belief probably because she has proof of an afterlife The other main focus of the novel has to do with a string of murders occurring in a city called Orinthal. However, there are plenty of other interesting dilemmas that the characters face. Raed is trying to find his sister and Merrick actually gets lost in the Otherside.

Within the 300 pages that Spectyr encompasses, it weaves all of these stories quite well. The chapters alternate between the perspectives of the three main characters. Spectyr raises a lot of conflicts and asks a lot of questions, but manages to tie them all together very well. At one point, I had been worried that the author wouldn't tie all the knots together quite well enough, but she has proven to do so quite admirably.

The novel's biggest strength is that it can tackle multiple plot lines without making the reader feel overwhelmed with information. I've tried reading books with multiple plots and quite often I end up feeling confused or bored from the result. But Spectyr handled the prospect quite well as well as in a way that each plot line felt significant, detailed and exciting.

The world-building is great. The city of Orinthal is unique in that the houses are mud huts. It comes with its own unique religions and monarchy system as well. One thing that the book is still missing is that there has yet to be a map of what the worlds look like. A lot of the different place names felt confusing after a while. In addition, there still needs to be a list of all the runes and what they do. I know this is included in later books, but it would have been a nice thing to have.

There isn't a whole lot more that I feel like I can say about the book. There are a few flaws in the way the characters behaved, but the book was altogether well-written and greatly entertaining. Now, if you know about me, I tend to give books a good rating on the sole fact that they're entertaining. (It's usually much harder to be entertained by a book than it is a movie or tv show.) While there's nothing ground-breaking here, Spectyr puts the series head and shoulders above it's other urban fantasy companions. I honestly can't say I've ever really liked an urban fantasy book as much as I liked this one.

Plus, I feel obliged to give anything with Jason Chan artwork a good rating. ...more

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Sep 14, 2013 Mashara rated it liked it · review of another edition

I liked this book as much as the first one. The only reason it has one star less is that the development of the story felt quite formulaic and repeating of the way it developed in the first book. Still, very interesting, the characters are very compelling and I want to know what's going to happen next.
What I love most about this books is the complete lack of explanatory paragraphs. There is only one I can remember and it stood out like a sore thumb. Again, so refreshing to be in the hands of an ...more

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