Early Review – Curse on the Land (Soulwood, Book 2) by Faith Hunter (4/5 stars)
Reading Level: Adult
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Length: 352 pages
Publisher: Roc
Release Date: November 1, 2016
ISBN-13: 978-0451473325
Stand Alone or Series: 2nd book in the Soulwood series
Source: eGalley from NetGalley.com
Rating: 4/5 stars
“Before Nell Ingram met skinwalker Jane Yellowrock, she had no one to rely on, finding strength only in in her arcane connection to the dark woods around her. But now she has friends in the newly-formed PsyLED team to keep her grounded—even if being part of the agency responsible for policing paranormals presents dangers of its own…
After training at the PsyLED academy, Nell returns home to her woods to find the land feeling sick and restless. And that sickness is spreading. With the help of her team, under the leadership of agent Rick LaFleur, Nell tries to determine the cause. But nothing can prepare them for the evil that awaits: an entity that feeds on death itself. And it wants more…”
I got a copy of this book to review through NetGalley. I didn’t like this book as much as the first one, parts of this book are fairly drawn out and boring.
Hunter gets kind of lost in her own magical theories at points. All the talk of lights and colors and geometric patterns within the earth got a bit confusing and hard to follow; it also didn’t have a lot of bearing on the overall story. I found myself skimming these parts as I got to the second half of the book.
Additionally Nell ends up doing a lot of running around and reading the land which got really really repetitive. For some reason this book took me a very long time to read because it just wasn’t all that interesting for long stretches of the story. This felt like a transition book where Nell is being given time to adjust to life outside the Church.
I do continue to enjoy the interesting characters in here. I also found the subplot dealing with Rick’s inability to transform into a panther to be very intriguing. The world itself is very intricate and interesting and I enjoyed learning about the other types of paranormals. Really this would have been a spectacular read if it just hadn’t been so long and bogged down with strange technical magical descriptions that go on and on for pages. Many of the more recent Jane Yellowrock books have suffered from this same issue.
Overall this was a good, but not great, continuation of the Soulwood series. I continue to enjoy the characters and love watching the changes in Nell. I also enjoyed the subplot involving Rick. I did not enjoy the slow pace and how repetitive the story got. At times this was really a struggle to read and it took me a very very long time to get through the book. I would tentatively recommend to urban fantasy fans; I really loved the first book in the series and will plan on reading the third…however if the third is as bogged down and long as this one I probably won’t read anymore.
This book goes towards the following reading challenges:
– You Read How Many Books? Reading Challenge
– New Release Challenge
– Flights of Fantasy Reading Challenge
