Some time ago I read the first volume, but didn't particularly like it. However, this second installment kept calling me from my mom's book shelf everytime I laid my eyes on it. I mean, there's occultism and the setting is partly in the 19th century. Unfortunately the problems were exactly the same as in the first one.

This one moves between two time periods as well, which is also its greatest weakness. The 21st century story line didn't interest me one bit. This would have been a lot more intense without the time shift thing. Now the aftertaste was just lackluster, because all the interesting stuff gets revealed in the 19th century, leaving nothing to grab onto in the 21st. There was also no overall seamless transition between the time periods. I mainly felt like cutting out the pages of the 21st century story line.

It takes a lot of skill to make a book both heavy and superficial. Especially at the beginning there was too much certain types of detail, and all the details had the same value, making the story and the setting flat and lifeless. There are other ways to describe a setting than merely listing streets, building, and brands. In one of the more amusing parts Mosse describes how beautiful Meredith enjoys pastries, even though she's thin. Um, ok. And that's relevant because...? The most annoying parts are still the ones, where Mosse clearly wants to showcase her knowledge of history. They would jump out more clearly from the rest of the text only if they were higlighted with a bright yellow pen. Oh, and why is it that when the story is set in France and the English obviously means the French the characters are speaking, you still have to stick French expressions separately in the dialogue? No sense whatsoever.

I started to have doubts regarding Léonie during the first chapter: moans when she is treated like a child but insists on behaving like one. Maybe this is normal behavior for a teenager, but personally I would have preferred either a bit more mature 17-year-old or an adult as the main character. Of course Léonie does starts to show signs of growing up, but only during the last few pages when her emotional growth couldn't make me care less.

On top of the thinness of the characters they are also extremely cheesy. The women are beautiful and the men are either athletic or otherwise handsome. Mosse keeps reminding a few times that a certain gentleman has very broad shoulders (sounds like a protection fantasy, eh?). The crooks then are either somehow physically deformed or approach some kind of psychotic mental state. The black and white point of view was so transparent, that in the end I wasn't irritated anymore.

But is it possible to get hooked on a bad book? In the evenings you grab it from the night stand, and you get glued on it until your eyelids start to droop. I don't think it's an awfully nice compliment towards the book, that you read it when you're practically zoned out. You want to read something, but nothing that is too complicated or requires actual brain activity.

The history lectures I mostly just glimpsed, because they didn't fit to the characters' dialogue at all. I felt like Mosse wanted to patronizingly educate the reader, instead of creating a truly genuine and interesting historical environment with small details.

The second star comes from the being hooked thing, so this wasn't completely devoid of hope. I still won't be touching the last installment, I'm done with Mosse. Besides, the idea of a trilogy is somewhat bizarre, since there is very little besides the setting that unifies the three stories.