Gwen has only just recovered from the happenings of the first book when her life gets turned upside-down again: somebody is trying to kill her. Is it a reaper? Is it vengance for Jasmine's death?
Before she can come close to solving this riddle, the students of Mythos Academy get shipped off to a
fancy ski resort for a school outing. Gwen, who has never tried to ski in her whole life, doesn't…mehrGwen has only just recovered from the happenings of the first book when her life gets turned upside-down again: somebody is trying to kill her. Is it a reaper? Is it vengance for Jasmine's death?
Before she can come close to solving this riddle, the students of Mythos Academy get shipped off to a fancy ski resort for a school outing. Gwen, who has never tried to ski in her whole life, doesn't really look forward to it, but does she have a choice? When she meets the good-looking Preston, though, her mood definitely picks up... Can he help her get over Logan, who broke her heart?
But it doesn't take Gwen long to realize that her troubles have come with her...
Pros:
I like that Gwen learns new things about her gift - and that she begins to realize that she truly belongs in the academy and doesn't need to be the total outsider. And she really seems to accept her role as a warrior of the Pantheon and Nike's Champion in the course of the novel. She has more contact with the other students, like Oliver and Kenzie, she makes new friends...
Yes, she can be rude and almost abrasive sometimes, she take bad decisions, but I think that actually makes her realistic and, well, human.
After a slow start, the plot picks up and generates some suspense, and then it keeps a fast pace until the end, where the author has snuck in some unexpected developments.
Contras:
The author repeats some things again and again (and again and again) ad absurdum, until you want to throw the book against the wall. Especially in the first part of the novel, it's easy to get the impression that whole passages have just been copied over and hardly changed from the first novel. I do understand why the author did this (for the people who either haven't read the first book or have read it a long time ago), but can't she at least find some new, fresh phrases and images to do this?
Sex, drugs and Rock'n'Roll are terribly overdone - you'd think that the students of Mythos Academy spend all their days boozing, smoking, and... Well, having sex. Gwen keeps finding used condoms in the library (!!!), and her friend Daphne plans on drinking so much on the school outing that she'll puke her guts out. Really? This book is read by teens - is it really necessary to portry positive characters binge-drinking?
Considering that Gwen is supposed to be an intelligent girl, she can be terribly dense. I don't want to spoil the story, so I'll just say this: she finds out that she can do more with her talent than she previously thought, but she fails to come to the obvious course of action until the big showdown at the end.
Parts of the plot are pretty predictable.
Summary:
I liked the characters, I liked the story, but the never-ending repetitions make the book tedious to read in some parts. I wish the author hadn't made it so easy to always keep one step ahead of Gwen - I'd rather had some more real surprises.
