Tagged: kai
The Taking by Terra Harmony
(Cover picture courtesy of Goodreads.)
Eighteen-year-old Serena now reigns as queen of both the Undine of The Deep and the wolves of The Dry. The alliance between her maidens and the werewolves is shaky when all at once the basic necessities of food and shelter are taken away and both their worlds fall apart. After decades of war, the two societies must work together if they want to survive what lies ahead. A promised land is theirs for the taking, but first, they must survive each other.
[Full disclosure: I requested and received an ebook copy of the whole trilogy on NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.]
The Taking picks up almost exactly where the second book, The Betrayed ends: with Serena deciding to move her entire civilization to a more hospitable environment. And since she’s now officially Queen of the Werewolves after Alaric’s death and the werewolves are back on the side of the Undine, that means they’re moving too. Moving two species who have been at war for almost two decades isn’t exactly going to be easy and Serena has no illusions. But ever since the werewolves were given an eviction notice from the protected park land, they really have no choice but to move with the Undine to a place where no one in the government will take notice of them or otherwise bother them. Lo and behold, they find a place up in the Arctic where it isn’t as polluted! But how does one get from around Vancouver Island to the Arctic on ships without having to land and go through customs?
The answer is to join up with the annual boat race, but that puts the move on an extremely tight schedule. Serena and the Undine must pack up the remnants of their civilization, transform into human form and keep that human form for almost three weeks. As we saw in previous books, the Undine tend to dry out when out of water for more than a day and it gets extremely painful after that. Not only that, the werewolves will have to learn to work with their former enemies and tensions are still high after Alaric’s death. Hmm…put two different species who have hated each other for two decades together on a cramped space for three weeks and see what happens. But as Serena makes clear to everyone, they have absolutely no choice. Still, some Undine choose to stay behind because they’re old and set in their ways. The move will decrease the pressure on the ecosystem because fewer Undine will be eating the sea life but the acidity of the ocean will eventually kill anyone who stays behind. Still, as Kai and Liam tell Serena, it’s not her decision.
Serena is now a mature young woman. She’s still struggling with being Queen at the age of only 18 but she’s really coming into her own. Now that she has political clout she’s finally free to ditch Murphy and mate with Kai, who is patient with her and doesn’t want her to do anything she isn’t comfortable with. Murphy takes the whole thing in stride because it means he can be with who he truly wants to without pretending to love a much younger woman. Amidst the uprooting of almost their entire kingdom, most of Serena’s subjects can’t be bothered and Serena has the confidence to do what she thinks is right. Still, things aren’t going to be easy sailing both literally and metaphorically because of the aforementioned former enemies being forced to live in cramped quarters together for almost a month. There are lots of bumps on the road to a new start.
The plot is of course interesting because by this point I was very invested in the characters. It was also quite a bit more fast-paced than the previous two books because of the time-crunch nature of the Undine/werewolf move. At the same time, the ending almost felt a little too rushed. It was exciting and thrilling but I really missed out on the little details of how everyone was going to survive and adjust up in the Arctic. The journey to their Arctic haven in the end was very rushed. I wish Terra Harmony had slowed things down just a little bit; enough to maintain the excitement without sacrificing her descriptive writing.
Still, The Taking was an enjoyable conclusion to what has been a good trilogy. If you haven’t started the trilogy I’d definitely recommend downloading the first book for free and giving it a try. And if you’ve stuck with the trilogy thus far you’ll enjoy the ending. I know I did.
I give this book 4/5 stars.
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The Betrayed by Terra Harmony
(Cover picture courtesy of Goodreads.)
Two separate worlds; the Undine of the Deep and the Wolves of the Dry. A history muddled in war but thick with family bonds blur the lines of right and wrong. The youngest members of each race unite, trying to steer their people away from the brink of disaster. Serena and Liam must work together to resolve the problems of their people before the pressure tears these twin siblings apart. But the betrayed are angry, and are out for revenge.
[Full disclosure: I requested and received an ebook copy of the whole trilogy on NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.]
With that doozy of a cliffhanger at the end of The Rising, I just had to read The Betrayed almost immediately after. I mean, finding out that not only the King is Serena’s father but that he sacrificed himself to save her and the Undine? That’s a pretty steep cliffhanger to end the first book in a trilogy on. It didn’t make the first book unsatisfying, though. It just made me want to read the second book as soon as possible!
So now Serena is Queen and the problems that were her father’s are now her own. Not only is the ocean not getting any less acidic where the Undine are situated, the werewolves are still a huge problem after the mini-war that broke out at the end of the last book. Werewolves were killed and Undine were killed; in the end it brought everyone no closer to a peace deal. Serena’s father’s sacrifice should have ended the war between werewolves and Undine but Alaric (the leader of the werewolves) is still demanding that the Undine hold to the king’s bargain and surrender Serena for him to experiment on. That’s obviously not going to happen now that she’s Queen, but Serena has more than herself to think of: only one of the women who were able to mate in the last book has been able to conceive and now the werewolves are blockading the beach again. Cordelia, the woman in question, now has nowhere to give birth to her child and that’s a major problem for a child who might be the new hope for the entire Undine species.
Serena really is going through a lot. First she learns that her father isn’t dead and is in fact the king and then he dies to save her and his people. She loves one of his guardsmen, Kai, but has to pretend to be mated to Murphy, the Captain of the Guard for political reasons so that the older generation will accept her. On top of all that, the supply of food for the Undine is dying out with the rising acidity of the ocean where they live. Things really aren’t looking good for Serena but I was really impressed with her character. She truly does rise to the challenge, even if things start out a little bumpy. Of course she makes mistakes and isn’t the best politician yet but she’s only 18. I shudder to think of most 18-year-olds (or 80-year-olds for that matter) trying to tackle all of those problems at once. And some of the solutions Serena comes up with aren’t popular; still, she sticks to them.
The plot in The Betrayed is a lot more fast-paced than the previous book and some of the plot twists are far less predictable. There was a lot of intrapersonal conflict on Serena’s part because of all the pressure placed on her but it was interesting since I’ve come to care about her character, particularly in this second book. She has a tough job and she’s doing the best she can, especially since she was never raised as royalty and never even suspected that the king was her father and she was the rightful heir to the Kingdom of the Undine. Yes, there’s also a little romantic intrigue because of Serena’s inability to express her love for Kai in the open but that’s sort of a background to the still-simmering tensions between werewolves and the Undine. The way Serena resolves the conflict is brilliant, if a little messy and while the book ends on another cliffhanger it’s nowhere near as dramatic as the cliffhanger of the first book.
If you enjoyed The Rising I think you’ll enjoy The Betrayed just as much, if not more. It’s a great second book that doesn’t really drag on and on because of how Terra Harmony makes you care about her characters. You really do worry about what happens to them and Serena is a very memorable character in her own right. Basically, if you read and enjoyed the first book you need to pick up this second book. You won’t regret it and you’ll be just as eager as I am for the third and final book.
I give this book 5/5 stars.