Having loved Phoenix Unbound, the first book in Grace Draven's Fallen Empire series, I was surprised by how much of a struggle it was for me to finish this book.
Nothing much happens for at least 250 pages. The hero and heroine meet, she nurses him back to health, they travel through rain storms, eat, drink tea, tell each other stories around campfires, pushes wagons out of mud...every mundane task performed by the heroine and her people as they go about their daily lives is described ad nauseum and repeated several times. Oh, and did I mention that Halani and Malachus ends up falling in love? But the chemistry is so tepid that I really didn't feel any of it. I ended skimming the last 1/3 of the book, skipping almost every other paragraph and still don't feel like I missed anything by doing so.
The story did pick up towards the end but by then I had lost all interest in these characters.
Nothing much happens for at least 250 pages. The hero and heroine meet, she nurses him back to health, they travel through rain storms, eat, drink tea, tell each other stories around campfires, pushes wagons out of mud...every mundane task performed by the heroine and her people as they go about their daily lives is described ad nauseum and repeated several times. Oh, and did I mention that Halani and Malachus ends up falling in love? But the chemistry is so tepid that I really didn't feel any of it. I ended skimming the last 1/3 of the book, skipping almost every other paragraph and still don't feel like I missed anything by doing so.
The story did pick up towards the end but by then I had lost all interest in these characters.
