Ahoy me mateys!  Grab yer grog!  Here be book 2 of the seventh installment of the 3 Bells trilogy showcase.  If ye missed book one click here. While I try to post no spoilers, ye have been forewarned and continue at yer own peril . . .

While I thought the first book was fantastic (minus the unnecessarily explicit sex scenes), I found book two to be enjoyable but very problematic in parts.  The main issue for me is that the scope has changed.  The first book was a family story first with all of the politics and such stemming from that.

Book two has a significant time jump and begins with new perspectives and political machinations.  With that comes POVs of new people that ye don't know with goals ye haven't had time to care about.  Many of the people I fell in love with in book one don't show up for what feels like half the book.  The pacing was very slow and getting updated on what happened in the last 18 months took a bit too much time.

Earth plays a bigger part here too which changes the politics and feel of the story.  It became more about the impending conflict and less about the characters and their interpersonal relationships and character arcs.  I lost some of the connection to the individuals which was much of the strength of the first book.  And yet there was still time for more unnecessary sex scenes.

And then there were the plot points about the wolf pack and being bipolar that I don't quite understand and make me feel slightly confused and uncomfortable.  Some of the political maneuverings were hard to follow.  There were sections where nothing happens to further the plot and were irksome.  Many unnecessary pages about cake for example.  And it does have the problem of feeling like the sole purpose is just a bridge to set-up the third novel.

This is not to say that there weren't things to enjoy.  The segues into the second half of the book was excellent and the story picked back up once ye got back to me favourite characters.  The plot still had wonderful plot twists that I wasn't expecting which led to a rather fun ending.  Character growth does happen in surprising ways for a couple of characters and there are several about whom I really need to know what happens next.  There are some fun and excellent (if slightly unrealistic) sections where it really is the moon vs. humans.  I did like learning a bit more about how life is back on Earth.

Basically this book does do its job of making me want to continue the trilogy.  Check in tomorrow for what me thinks of book three.  Arrrr!