Book Review: Powdered Oak and Seven Metals by Ryan Kurr
Genre(s): Urban Fantasy
Book Synopsis:
After Nina senses a push from Spirit, she relocates her coven to Nova, Colorado, a small, snowy mountain town just outside Denver. But when Leo—her most powerful and dangerously gifted witch—decides to stray from the coven’s goal for motives of his own, the coven begins to unravel. Soon they find themselves in greater peril than they ever imagined possible, hunted by murderous witches hungry for power and revenge, and with Death breathing down the neck of one of their own. As the rift between the coven and their prophesied goal widens, they struggle not only with their own fears and demons but a new plane of existence, while Leo is forced to make an impossible choice between restoring balance to the world—and his own soul.
Review:
This is the second book in the Esoteric Alchemy series, and it begins at a point sometime after book one’s conclusion—I’m not sure if it’s weeks or months.
I recall that I really liked the first book (Sage, Smoke and Fire) when I read it a couple years ago. The series features modern day witches with some unique abilities, and they must work together in order to fulfill a prophecy related to their group. If they fail, the world is doomed. But the group of witches comes from a very diverse background, and not every personality meshes well with the rest. Some of them have sketchy pasts and are hiding some very dark secrets. I like the premise of this series and the brand of magic it portrays.
I wanted to enjoy this book as much as I did the first one in the series, but it just didn’t meet my expectations. The first couple chapters felt a bit disjointed and the story jumped around a little more than I’d prefer, making it hard to get into initially. But once I got to about chapter four, the story line started to flow and was more linear, which made it much easier to follow.
Some of the spell work featured also got bogged down significantly in places as long lists of ingredients were thrown at the reader. I don’t often say this, but there such a thing as too much detail sometimes. I also felt a significant disconnect with most of the characters, which I don’t recall being a problem in the first book, and this one didn’t feel nearly as polished. (There weren’t any spelling or grammatical errors that I noticed, but the writing didn’t seem to flow as well. It felt a bit…stilted, for lack of a better term.)
The story was interesting enough to keep me reading to the end, but I don’t feel it was as good as book one.
Author website: ryankurr.com
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