As a general rule I don't care for YA that much but this series has managed to cross that gap for me and become a real 5 Star story that just happens to have main characters that are around the 19-21 age.
Most of this installment into this series is taken up with the Tournament of Blades which is treated as something of dire importance which requires the reader to treat it that way a bit. While it is not earth shattering important it does provide a action filled backdrop to develop a story that might have gotten dull if approached as some sort of police type drama. So you end up with about 3 plots:
1. The tournament and who will be the winner
2. The romance that keeps going back and forth with the usual angst that YA novels seem to require.
3. Plus the REAL plot of who is a homicidal killer (I liked this one)
I am not going to spoil any of these plots for you, there are some surprises and a couple that you can see coming but a couple you can't :) All things considered I loved the story and could only put it down the first night because my Kindle woke me up when it bounced off my foot.
Bottom Line: A great story with a lot of whodunnit that I liked and a romance that was getting to be borderline stupid plus a homicidal maniac, what more could you ask for? I was going to give it 4 Stars but could not really come up with anything I thought deserved a big subtraction for other than a minor one of being a small bit predictable in a couple of places. So let us call it 4.5 round to 5 , great story and highly recommended BUT you really cannot get into this story without reading book 1
Cold Burn of Magic (Black Blade Book 1)
so don't even try it.
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