It's difficult to relate what I found unsatisfactory about this book without revealing more than I would have cared to know, prior to reading the book, myself. I’ll avoid spoilers by saying this - The standard plot ( Protagonist, of the “Guy redeemed from ill use/bad habits” sort, moves a step up from his former nature/life to better strength and wisdom before some terrible cliff-hanger ensues.) that is found in most series; is rather absent from this second book: Revelation. It's almost refreshing, really, in that this book doesn't follow a reader's anticipated patterns of character and story development. Unfortunately with all of the mistakes, suffering, pain and torture (lots of the last three) undergone by the characters, in this book, reading its first two thirds, was like like re-reading the first two thirds of the previous book (Transformation). In that book our Hero spent most of his time enslaved. He’s free now, but here again, there is great attention paid to depravation, humiliation and bleeding. And all of this misery comes without the “"better make sure they'll read the next book" pay off of his achieving freedom that we got at the end of the first book.

Carol Berg writes well. Her prose is good and her characters draw one's attention. There is a good story here, which carried me as far as completing this 2nd volume of the series, but I guess the 'revelation' for me is that I just can't enjoy where this author takes her characters, nor how long she leaves them there. When torture becomes boring it is decidedly overdone. Ultimately, I found this book a slog and I won't be staying on for the third book, Restoration. If you choose to read beyond the first book, I hope that you can ride the story on without getting stuck in the muck. Perhaps the ending makes it worth all the pain; I’m not going to find out. Good luck.
( )

Love the cover. Seyonne just gets more interesting. Fiona turns out to be a big surprise. Wonderful. ( )

Seyonne is the only Warden, vanquishing demon after demon, followed and watched for signs of treason. He begins a quest to find his son who was turned out for being demon infested and failing to confront a demon that he could sense no evil in it. Seyonne finds himself playing spy and then going into the demon world. It's long and involved but still interesting.
( )

This is the 2nd book in the Rai-Kirah trilogy, which I originally read in print five or six years ago. This past November, I started listening to the series in audio during commutes. I’m a terrible audiobook listener, but this series is one of my very few successes.

In my review of the first book, I wrote at excessive length about my difficulties with audiobooks and why this series is working for me, so I don’t want to repeat myself too much here. However, I do want to comment again on the narrator, Kevil Stillwell. He sets the perfect tone for the main character, the first-person narrator for the story, and he uses recognizably distinct voices for the other main characters. Most of his reading is done in a fairly understated way. When he does get more dramatic, it’s always at an appropriate moment, and it has occasionally given me chills. For me, it’s so much more effective when a narrator saves the drama for special moments.

This story begins a couple years after the previous book ended. It tells a complete story, with the main issues resolved at the end, but the foundation needed to truly appreciate it is set in the first book, Transformation. I wouldn’t recommend reading this book first. There were many new and interesting twists that built on the things we had learned in the first book. In particular, we learn a lot more about the demons and how the Ezzarians ended up being responsible for protecting the world against them.

There was a lengthy section around the middle that started to feel like it was dragging a little. Our main character is cut off from everything familiar and, most importantly, he was cut off from all of the secondary characters I enjoyed so much. The story was still interesting, but my attention started drifting more frequently than it had before. I remember being completely absorbed by the entire series when I read it in print, so my perspective is likely the result of listening to it over a very long period of time in audio, a format with which I have trouble paying attention to begin with. Instead of that section lasting for a day or two of reading, it lasted for weeks’ worth of commutes.

There were several great moments throughout the book, and I particularly loved the ending. I’m not going to have any more opportunities to listen to audiobooks this week, but I look forward to starting the final book next Monday. ( )

This book was very unique, but also borderline strange. It's science fiction and takes place in a fictional world. Put simply, it's basically about a wizard that enters human souls in order to free them from demonic possession. The story is imaginative and the author paints vivid images of her imaginative world. ( )