Flight into Fantasy

Title: The Wolf: Sons of Destiny, book 2
Author: Jean Johnson
Genre: fantasy romance
Grade: B+
Reason for Reading: For once the phrase, “I love this series like a fat kid loves cake” is perfectly appropriate. Because though the first two books in this series have their flaws, they are charming and I keep wanting more.

Synopsis: Alys of Devries has loved Wolfer, the second in the eight brothers now exiled on the island of Nightfall since she was a tiny child. However, for the past few years she has been living under the thumb of her cruel uncle Broger. At last, Alys escapes Broger and comes to Nightfall, where she once more reunites with the man she loves. But Broger’s machinations are far from over.

My Thoughts: As with the first book in this series, this book is campy and a guilty pleasure read. But in this installment, we get more of Johnson’s world-building, a bit more character development of everyone around, and a really sweet romance.

I actually liked Alys a lot better than I liked Kelly. In another author’s hands, she would have been incredibly wishy-washy and irritating, but for whatever reason, she worked for me. She is gentle and sweet, and we actually do see the mixture of bravery and timidity that everyone mentions, though it gets tiresome to hear about said mixture of bravery and timidity every five minutes.

Wolfer stood out a lot more for me as a character than did Saber, which is all to the good. Yes, he is described in terms of being a predator, but at least we didn’t get to hear about his raging beast within. And for all that he was described as somewhat wild, he was really quite cute and cuddly and a genuinely good beta hero. I just wanted to give him a hug and muss up his hair.

As for the romance, well, see, that’s where I start to quibble. It’s mostly over by about the halfway point of the book. There’s no real dark moment for either of these characters, just a minor bad patch that is easily straightened out. I would have liked their courtship to have been just a tad more complicated instead of basically tossed aside there at the end for external conflicts. That being said, I do like that Ms. Johnson’s sex scenes aren’t always full of sparkles and fireworks. They are, in fact, fairly realistic for romance novel sex scenes. At first I thought that was a bit irritating, but now I’ve decided that’s an idiosyncracy I can live with.

As for the secondary characters, I thought that there was some good development happening. I do like that Ms. Johnson gives her men distinct enough personalities that you can tell one from another. And some of them (like Evanor, my current favorite) are, once more, wonderfully non-alpha. So it was good to reconnect with the brothers again. That being said, there was waaayyyyyy too much Kelly in this book. I thought she had a bad habit of stealing every scene she was in, and her personality definitely eclipsed that of the shy, gentle Alys. It’s awesome that Kelly stole the show in her own book, but she already had her turn, and after a while she irritated me. Particularly since she started gloating about her sex life to Alys within five minutes of their meeting, which would have really irritated me IRL.

The plot is slowly coming together, too. There’s enough of a story arc that we have good reasons to keep reading the series. I’m fascinated by the idea of a land of female mages, and I can’t wait to see what Dominor’s been up to since the events of the last book.

Overall, this is a fun addition to the series and comes recommended.