West is the sequel to EAST, which I have previously reviewed. If you don't want East spoiled, then I would recommend not reading this review.
As I mentioned in my East blog post, East was one of my favorite books growing up. Looking back on it, I think East was one of my favorite books because the main character Rose, is an outstanding human being. She's very brave, tough, and musters her way through every situation presented to her. She's really rather remarkable overall. So I was pretty excited to read the sequel and have more adventures with Rose.
An amazon summary, "In the sequel to the beloved high fantasy East, Rose sets off on a perilous journey to find her true love when he goes missing in a thrilling tale of danger, magic, adventure, and revenge.
When Rose first met Charles, he was trapped in the form of a white bear. To rescue him, Rose traveled to the land that lay east of the sun and west of the moon to defeat the evil Troll Queen. Now Rose has found her happily-ever-after with Charles—until a sudden storm destroys his ship and he is presumed dead. But Rose doesn’t believe the shipwreck was an act of nature, nor does she believe Charles is truly dead. Something much more sinister is at work. With mysterious and unstoppable forces threatening the lives of the people she loves, Rose must once again set off on a perilous journey. And this time, the fate of the entire world is at stake." AMAZON LINK OF JUSTICE
After the events of East, Rose and Charles have been happily married, have a bairn (baby) together, and Charles has gone on to become a professional flauto player. Rose and Charles are going to visit her family, but have to arrive separately. Rose travels with their bairn, Winn, and arrives through some kind of tricky situations, but Charles, Charles' ship has been destroyed. Some of the passengers have survived, and some have claimed to see Charles, but Charles is nowhere to be found. Rose leaves her bairn with her family, and sets off with Neddy and Sib to find Charles.
The storm that took Charles' boat isn't the only peculiar disaster; there's also a sweating sickness that's starting to spread across the land and is taking people's lives. Regardless, Rose, Neddy, and Sib set off to find Charles and follow a chain of clues before Rose uncovers that trolls are involved again. Rose goes off on her own to pursue a lead and runs into a troll prince from another troll kingdom who seems to be working with the troll queen from East. The troll prince shape shifts into a snake and bites Rose, leaving her poisoned in a cave where she confronted him. Luckily, she is retrieved by the man she got information from, and he helps nurse her back to health as best as he can.
That's enough summary.
This book took, what felt like, 80 years of reading time for me to finish. I still loved having the story told from different narrators so I could see what was going on with the different family members in different parts of the world, but the book was so long and full of some extra details that really just inhibited the momentum of the plot. Literally, I got to around page 360 before it became tolerable for me to sit and read it for a long period of time again. With all that being said, it's a very enriched story because it includes so many different details. While I appreciate that aspect, it just significantly hampered my attention span. I really liked the last third of the book, but it took so long to get there, that I really can't give this book a recommended books mark.
I need to go into spoiler land. Do not read further if you don't want the book spoiled. Just assume at this point I've signed off with, "Happy reading!"
So. Winn. Winn was dosed with something by the troll queen to start to give him arts so that he would eventually rule the world in her stead. Rose and Charles put a stop to that by killing the troll queen, but Winn will probably still have arts. So will Rose. Because SIB is apparently a human raised by fae in a different part of the world which is how she learned to listen to the wind and started to teach Rose those arts. I find many things upsetting about this, as it's all laying the groundwork for more books in this series. On the one hand, I might find them enjoyable, but on the other hand, if it's going to take another 10 years to get the next book, and it will be just as long to read, I'm out. I'm kind of also annoyed that we got to see MORE supernatural elements dealing with the arts in the world (the three weavers/sisters/fates, whatever you want to call them), but it's still referred to as arts. I just find that incredibly annoying that they're not just referring to it as magic. It didn't bother me in East, but I think with so many more examples presented to us in West, it actually bothers me now. Especially because Sib doesn't refer to what she does with the wind as arts. So what the heck is Sib doing?! MAGIC??? Again, something pretty petty to be annoyed about, but I just am.
I did enjoy the book overall, but I also found some stuff kind of annoying in this book versus the last book. Like, we still see Rose's mother have so many superstitions or charms to deal with the world, but we already saw that very heavily in East so I wish we had seen other aspects of her character in West. I also don't think we had any chapters from Arne in this book, and he was one of my favorite voices to read in East. I don't know, there was SO MUCH BOOK as it is, that I don't really want to encourage more book, but maybe just more editing. Eh?
Happy reading!
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