Beautiful Darkness
by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl
Little, Brown and Company
2011
Rating: **
Warning: There are some minor spoilers--nothing big, and honestly I think it’s obvious, but just in case, stop after the second paragraph!
As the second in a series, I don’t have a lot of hope for later books. Beautiful Darkness was rather difficult for me to muddle through. We follow Ethan Wate again as his pines after Lena Duchannes, the Caster whose ultimate choice in Light or Dark will determine The Order of Things. Now, Lena is mourning the death of her beloved uncle and pushing Ethan away as she becomes closer with her already Dark cousin Ridley, and new boy in town, John Breed. He has to figure out a way to convince her that she still has a choice in her own life, that it’s not too late, but only if she’ll stop running from him.
Ethan spends most of this books on a quest to find Lena. He’s following her. He’s having visions of her and John Breed. He’s going to save her. He is her only hope. Commence the eye rolling. The amount of time spent searching and wondering about Lena could have been spent actually moving the story forward. There were snippets of time when something truly interesting was happening, and the at the end things finally started moving, but overall, I felt like this journey to find Lena must have taken them weeks--months even. It was dragged out so much that it felt like it took me months.
In addition to the new boy that Lena has taken up with, a new girl arrives in town--Liv, a Keeper In Training. It gave me a little hope that maybe the book would take a twist and Ethan would find some happiness with her and just stop moping around and trying to save someone who could just make her own decision if she wasn’t such a wuss. Liv is more interesting than Lena. I wanted to know more about her and I didn’t understand why Ethan wouldn’t have made that decision as well.
I haven’t decided if I will read the next book in the series, Beautiful Chaos. The only thing that would really convince to me read it is if Liv is also there. I want more of her. I care about her more than I care about the others, but from what it felt like at the end, I’m doubting she has much of a role--if any--in the next book.
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