I’m taking a page from Jay’s book and re-running some old reviews from my now-defunct personal review blog. For the most part they are unchanged in content, except for removing things that no longer apply and actual editorial scouring…no, not even my prose is immune. 
So this is the second book in the Nine Kingdoms series, and even though the first one ended on a cliffhanger, this section doesn’t actually pick up right where the first left off. Rather, we come in a month later. Morgan has survived the poisoning by the evil mastermind sorcerer (whom Miach’s ancestors had a chance to kill and decided to let one of their descendents take out instead) that ends the first book. She is still recovering at her childhood foster-father’s, and Miach has contained the spreading evil for the time being and can now follow his heart. Most of the book is wrapped up in the two of them finally admitting their love for one another, and Morgan getting past the whole Miach lied to her thing and then Morgan accepting who she really is–the daughter of an elven princess and one of the most evil mages of all time. (Except, you know, the one Miach’s great-to-the-nth-power grandfather chose to not kill.)
For a 378-page book, not really a lot happens…if you’re thinking about how much normally happens in a fantasy book. But the books aren’t, strictly speaking, fantasy, and I think this second in the trilogy kind of shows that. What they are is romantic fantasy, and this book progressed at about the normal pace and level of emotional exposition for a romance novel. The first book hid its nature much more cleverly; it was more of a fantasy adventure story with some romance thrown in, whereas this was a romance story with a bit of fantasy adventure thrown in.
I enjoyed the book all the same, even with that said. It was less tongue-in-cheek than the first one; it seemed like it had settled down into a book that was taking itself seriously as a story, rather than seeing itself as a farce. It could still laugh at itself, yeah, but it seemed to have developed some self-respect. (The first one was almost too self-mocking to be taken seriously. Either that or too bad to be taken seriously, and between that one’s writing and this one’s, the editors sat down with LK and had a discussion with her about how to write fantasy. Either way.) The slow forgiveness Morgan extends to Miach, and the deepening of their feelings for one another and trust of one another was handled very well. It unfolded at a believable pace, and for believable reasons.
Basically, this is the second book in a trilogy, in a profoundly hilarious way. Most second books end up being the throw-away book, the one wherein all the action that happens proves to be fruitless because the biggest conflict is still to come, etc., etc. The pointlessness of this second book’s action was handled differently than, say, Joe Abercrombie did with Before They Are Hanged, where at the end of the book the characters discover they’ve traveled across the world for absolutely no reason. No, Lynn Kurland handled it by simply not putting action in the book at all. The book was a set-up for what will be the final quest and show-down against the evil mastermind. It was expository in terms of the characters’ personal histories and the history of their world. I kind of like the take; it was an honest way for LK to say, “If I were writing strict fantasy, this would be a duology, but since I’m writing romance fantasy, it’s a trilogy, so come get your romance before it goes all Dragonlance again.”
I’m excited to jump into the third book in hand and find out how everything goes down. As with any good romance, I am 95% sure how it will end, but that’s okay–these books are a good yarn, an extended fairy tale, and read for the enjoyment of the story and the characters rather than to be surprised or philosophically hounded by the ultimate outcome of events.
