I dislike the second book in fantasy trilogies where all too often, the author basically has the characters traveling around, just to place them for the third book. These books are often slow with little character development; just a vagary of mine when reading fantasy.
However, Ms. Spark's The Tower of Living and Dying is one of the exceptions to that rule. The story is still told from different POVs: Marith, Thalia, Tobias, and Orhan. Orhan's part in Sorlost is kept very different from the others and chronicles his rise and fall as Sorlost falls victim to plague and politics. I can't wait to see how his arc weaves back into the rest of the story.
Meanwhile, Marith is crowned king, Thalia is his queen, and Tobias is still determined to kill him. It sounds simple, but Marith is set on conquering the world and he doesn't care who has to die to accomplish this. Thalia is the one leash, but her influence isn't much as she watches him kill thousands to achieve his goal. Tobias is a desperate man, knowing he won't be able to kill Marith, but determined to die trying.
It's a grim world filled with senseless violence and bloody death. Ms. Spark has a unique writing style that took me a while to get used to in the first book, but now I love it, treating it as part of the landscape of this story. It's repetitive and fragmented but really works for her. Here is her description of a dragon:
"The red scales shimmered before him. Long sinuous twists of the neck. The eyes turned from him to Thalia and back again. Eyes like shields. Eyes like stars. Eyes like staring up into the night. Falling upwards into the abyss. Falling down into the bottomless black sea. Cherry blossom falling white and pink like snow around him in triumph. Coloured fragments of mage glass falling falling red and blue and green and white."
I can't wait to see where the conclusion leads. There's a bit of a cliffhanger ending here in book 2, and the only thing I know is that it can go anywhere, but it's going to be a dark journey. ( )