Opinions of a Wolf

Summary:
Ty lives with his pioneer family subsea but he can’t convince his crush Gemma to leave Topside.  Why is she so afraid of subsea?  This was his biggest problem until his parents get kidnapped by surfs when they attempt to do a trade.  Plus, Gemma wants to convince her fugitive brother to let her tag along with him.  And townships keep disappearing, only to turn up later, chained up and anchored subsea with everyone dead inside.  It’s a giant web of mysteries but do they intertwine at all?

Review:
I absolutely loved the first entry in this scifi series, which is unusual for me, since it’s YA.  Not generally my genre.  So I was excited to see the sequel available on Audible.  It’s still an exciting adventure and interesting world but not quite as tightly and expertly constructed as last time.

Whereas Ty’s voice worked perfectly in the first book, in this one he reads a bit young.  He went through a lot in the first entry, he should have presumably matured a bit more than he has.  Similarly, Gemma hasn’t developed much since the first book either.  I think these characters should have been given more space to grow more.  Particularly in a YA series, it’s important to let the characters develop and mature at a more rapid rate.  That’s the reality for teenagers after all.

Plot-wise, I honestly felt that there was a bit of a deus ex machina at work that also didn’t fully play into the rules of the world as originally set up.  Still, though, the mystery is well-plotted and difficult to predict.  It includes real danger without being too violent.  It’s the perfect level of thriller for a YA reader who’s not so into the gore.  On the other hand, I also found it frustrating that Ty’s parents aren’t around for most of the book.  One of the things refreshing about the first one was that his parents were actually present and helpful without being too pushy or overshadowing.  This time around, Falls went the more popular YA adventure route and just flat-out got rid of them for most of the book.

But the world Falls has built is still rich and unique, and she expanded upon it.  We now get to see more of what the surf life is like, in addition to more of the shady side of things, such as the boxing/fighting rings.  We also see some more of the government and law enforcement and have a better understanding of the world as a whole.  It’s all richly imagined and drawn, right down to what styles of clothes different groups wear to what they eat.  One detail I particularly enjoyed was that the surfs, a poor outcast lot, eat a lot of fish and blubber because it’s easy to catch, whereas Ty’s family eats a lot of vegetables because they grow them.  Details like that really make a world.

The audiobook narrator, Keith Nobbs, read the whole thing a bit flat for my taste.  He didn’t have as much enthusiasm and inflection as I thought was appropriate for a book about a subsea adventure starring two young teenagers!  The production quality was high, he was easy to understand, but he didn’t really bring Ty to life.  I’d recommend reading the print book over the audio, honestly.

Overall, then, the characters are a bit slow in their development and the plot feels a bit lazier than last time, but the characters are still well-rounded and the plot maintains an appropriate level of mystery.  Toss in the richly imagined and describe post-apocalyptic and very wet world, and it’s well worth the read.

4 out of 5 stars

Source: Audible

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Previous Books in Series:
Dark Life, review