Review – Seeds of Rebellion (Beyonders, Book 2) by Brandon Mull (3/5 stars)

Reading Level: Middle Grade
Genre: Fantasy
Size: 512 pages
Publisher: Aladdin
Release Date: March 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-1416997948
Stand Alone or Series: 2nd book in the Beyonders Trilogy
Source: Bought
Rating: 3/5 stars

This is the second book in the Beyonders trilogy. The third book will be titled Chasing the Prophecy and is scheduled for a March 2013 release. I had a lot of trouble reading this book. It is a decent story, but nowhere near the quality of Mull’s Fablehaven series. I just couldn’t stay engaged with the story or the characters and this book was a struggle to get through.

Jason is itching to get back to Lyrian after being sent home at the end of the first book. When he gets there he runs around telling people that the Word did not work to destroy the evil wizard Maldor. Rachel meanwhile has meet up with a charm woman and is leaning more about how to use Words.

Seriously Jason runs around telling people the Word didn’t destroy Maldor for the first half of the book. Jason also gathers people together and journeys back to the Blind King. At this point we are over halfway through the book.

Eventually we track through the jungle, meet more Seed people, and go through a zombie infested wasteland. So there is a lot of adventuring and some fighting. I just felt like the pacing was way off and Jason didn’t know his purpose or accomplish much for large portions of the book. I almost stopped reading halfway through because nothing was happening.

We do get to meet some excellent new characters. Jason is accompanied by a smuggler named Aram, who is half-giant, and we see a lot more of Ferrick and Ned (who is incredibly adept at poisons).

Rachel also learns to speak magic words and becomes a force to be reckoned with. I enjoyed Rachel’s character growth and wish we had spend a lot more time hearing from her. Instead most of the book is told from Jason’s POV and he just doesn’t grow much or do anything all that interesting in this book.

While the book is decently written, I thought the pacing left a lot to be desired. I just found my mind wandering a lot and had a really tough time staying engaged in the story. There are so many characters in this book that we don’t get to know any of them really well, so that also makes it difficult to care about what’s happening.

Overall an okay addition to this series, but not great. I didn’t like the first book in this series a ton either. So, I guess if you were a huge fan of the first book in this series you will probably enjoy this one. I would definitely recommend reading Mull’s Fablehaven series over this one, in my opinion that is just a much more well written series. At this point I don’t think I will be reading the third book in this series.

This book goes towards the following reading challenges:
– Zombie Reading Challenge
– 150+ Books Reading Challenge