Book Review: The Perilous Sea (Elemental Trilogy #2) by Sherry Thomas

It's been a while but I'm here with a book review! 

The Perilous Sea is the second book in the Elemental Trilogy by Sherry Thomas. The first book was The Burning Sky and while I enjoyed it, it was a bit lackluster in the actual follow through. This was similar which is such a disappointment to me. 

This is another one of those books where you can never quite figure out what your feelings are about it. Think of it as a cross between Harry Potter, Aladdin, Avatar: The Last Airbender, and The Hunger Games. There are wands, flying carpets, bending, and all sorts of other craziness that goes on in this book.

We meet back up with Iolanthe and Titus when they go back to Eton to take on the Bane and then everything starts going a little crazy. Does anybody else remember that season of LOST where they added the flash forwards and you could tell that it was important to the story line but weren't quite sure how and you were just struggling to keep things straight in your mind? It was a bit like that to me.

This definitely had a bit of Second Book Syndrome going for it too, which was incredibly disappointing. Titus kind of turns into a royal jackass and he loses all faith in who he is and what he is supposed to be doing. I can understand having a bit of an existential crisis but to me, he basically threw his hands up and said "Fuck it, we're all gonna die anyways!" which felt weak to me.

Truly, the strongest character in this series is Iolanthe because she not only is an incredibly powerful sorceress but also puts up with Titus' waffling and nonsense. She kind of felt like the sidekick that went along behind the steamrolling main character and cleaned up their messes and got them set back onto the right path. Titus seemed to miss the logic sometimes and she was there to tell him to slow down and think things through.

BUT! Big But!
I did enjoy the book. Once the plot got rolling, it was a fun read despite Titus acting like an idiot for the majority of the book. I enjoyed the banter between him and Iolanthe and there was a healthy dose of romance and cuteness to go along with it.

There was also a bit more *actual* action to this book. The first one seemed like there was a lot of planning going on but the flash forwards allowed for there to be more magic and fighting instead of just training and preparing. They weren't just running scared and trying to figure out what was going on. Once they had a plan, they attempted to execute it.

And the world building was so much better in this book! I love a well constructed world that a series can exist in. The first book, while it was there, it didn't really have any details about the actual space that all of this happened in. There was no real sense of oppression, despite having an apparent evil overlord and the bad guy was far enough away that it didn't really impact anything. The addition of more action helped and it gave the characters more space to inhabit. However, there was still a massive lack of enough bad things going on to the regular people to justify needing a rebellion. As I understood it, only the wealthy and royalty ever felt oppressed in any way and that was because they were dealing with the drama loudly and up close. The normal people never really had anything to do with it. They are free to move about and live how they want for the most part.

The ending though...it is a cliffhanger and this doesn't need a spoiler tag since it is pretty obvious from the first book that there is going to be a battle.

The author spends all of this time and effort building up to a battle and then just stops the book. I hope the next book isn't just about three or four days of the battle and right after because I will throw something. This book covered about 7 weeks of time. It wouldn't have killed the author to just add the battle at the end and then have the next book be the aftermath. But no. Just had to be a cliff hanger. GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

But yeah...it's a good book but not one of my favorites. I'll pick up the last one when it comes out so that I can have some resolution but it felt a bit like a filler book and I wanted to punch Titus in the face more than once. It's a quick read and entertaining if you like magic and stupid boys.

So three stars? Three and a half? It wasn't bad but it also wasn't fantastic, you know? I'd explain more but frankly, I have stitches in the tip of one of my fingers and this shit is starting to hurt.