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A review by nonesensed
Turning Darkness Into Light by Marie Brennan
hopeful
5.0
Being the granddaughter of the famous Lady Trent is trying. Not because one's grandmother is cruel or demanding, but because it comes with certain goals to measure up to, if only in one's own head. With a not too distant personal and public disaster behind her, our dear main character finds herself faced with an opportunity she cannot miss out on: translating one of the oldest and most complete Draconian texts ever discovered. She'll just have to put up with a pompous fool with no appreciation for history and his niece/ward while working in complete secrecy. What could go wrong?
I can't begin to tell you how excited I was to learn The Memoirs of Lady Trent had a sequel! A little apprehensive too, but that's only to be expected when reading a new part of a formerly finished series. You never know if a sequel will manage to capture the magic of its predecessor, but this book definitely did! I read it together with my sister, and we both had a marvelous time revisiting this world!
A good sequel brings back what was good about the first story while adding something new, and Turning Darkness Into Light aimed for that target and hit center. Not only are we switching the memoir format for a more 'found footage' situation, the original cast have cameos but do not dominate the plot. You follow along the story as the characters themselves learn about what's happening, and you get to know them as themselves, without too much influence from previous characters, though also tying this book to the previous ones at appropriate moments, so it's a true sequel instead of a story simply set in the same world (no hate for those kind of stories, but with such a character driven setting it'd be tricky for me to dive fully in without some anchor to our previous cast).
This year, I truly needed some 'hopepunk'. This book provided that for me. Highly recommended!
I can't begin to tell you how excited I was to learn The Memoirs of Lady Trent had a sequel! A little apprehensive too, but that's only to be expected when reading a new part of a formerly finished series. You never know if a sequel will manage to capture the magic of its predecessor, but this book definitely did! I read it together with my sister, and we both had a marvelous time revisiting this world!
A good sequel brings back what was good about the first story while adding something new, and Turning Darkness Into Light aimed for that target and hit center. Not only are we switching the memoir format for a more 'found footage' situation, the original cast have cameos but do not dominate the plot. You follow along the story as the characters themselves learn about what's happening, and you get to know them as themselves, without too much influence from previous characters, though also tying this book to the previous ones at appropriate moments, so it's a true sequel instead of a story simply set in the same world (no hate for those kind of stories, but with such a character driven setting it'd be tricky for me to dive fully in without some anchor to our previous cast).
This year, I truly needed some 'hopepunk'. This book provided that for me. Highly recommended!