Let's hope Sebastian comes back to the excitement she found in Ash Princess for her final installment. And when we get to the end, the expected battle, readers are also watching from a distance. It's so much better to show than tell, and it adds an immediacy for the reader. The rest should have been shown this way to pull the story forward. Many of this commentary feels redundant, as it's shown through the actions of the characters. Lady Smoke is also slowed down by its main character's lengthy reflections. When she gets out among her people in the refugee camps, she's moved to action, but so slowly that the reader will know what the plan should have been a whole lot sooner. Theo sits in a foreign palace not wanting to get married for hundreds of pages. This sophomore effort of author Laura Sebastian falls into all the sequel traps, the worst being a long wait to the final action. Our main protagonists starts as a captive, beaten-down princess. Based on the titles, it is easy to see the story’s progression over the course of the series. With far too much reflection and dialogue and far too little immediate action, this sequel fails to maintain the same visceral, absorbing energy as the first book. The books in the trilogy consist of Ash Princess (April 2018), Lady Smoke (Feb 2019) and Ember Queen (Feb 2020).
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