I’ve listened to this one without taking any relevant notes, so this will probably be short.

 

We start with Lorian committing to the common obsessive boyfriend behavior of separating PeePee from her friends and support system by taking her on a ship with only the old aunt lady and him for company.  PeePee’s still mad at him for all the stuff from the last book, like he might have killed her parents and burned her hometown, but it’s like high school mad.

 

Side note – she went from a golly gee village lass to a diabolical queen in about two hours.  It’s jarring – the longer the book goes the more she takes on her anything-for-my-people! role and is strategic with every move she makes, and I just keep thinking, wtf is this?  There’s such a trend that our protagonist women are masterminds at politics and warfare, and it’s like, no.  It’s as likely that every single mate man in these has the most enormous genitalia you’ve ever seen, and it’s like, sounds like they have some kind of genetic disease, they might want to get checked out. 

 

I digress.

 

So Lorian’s all butthurt that PeePee’s not reading her diary to him so he decides to separate her even more by taking her off the ship by herself so they can travel to some camp by themselves.  Red flag, PeePee, red flag.  They get attacked, it’s fine, they make it to the camp where she’s reunited with her friends.  It’s some kind of Hybrid-Fae camp and the two factions don’t like each other because the Fae let the Hybrid’s burn, which, yeah, not cool. 

 

PeePee takes more fighting classes, because of course she does, and has to best a hybrid with her magic because the hybrid has trust issues and because Demos tells her to.  She doesn’t want to, for some reason she has an aversion to using her magic to, you know, save her own life, but she does it just in time to meet the Douchey Fae King, who is Lorian’s older brother.  They meet and he tells her to go somewhere, and she’s like on it, here we go!  Because she’s playing dumb, but she’s not dumb!  And I’m finding it hard to care, and this is only book two.

 

Lorian is kind of his brother’s errand boy, so he had to go take care of some wildlings and isn’t there when PeePee leaves on her side quest.  He’s pissy when he returns to camp and PeePee is gone, so now he has to go hunt her down so they can go to wherever together.  And I can’t even remember where they went.  Let me think.  Maybe to the Hybrid kingdom?  Who knows. 

 

He hunts her down because she’s his mate.  (We’re told the mate bond is soooo rare in this world, so they are super de dooper blessed, though she doesn’t know yet.  Sigh.  Mates.)  Lorian’s blood prickles and he starts to pant at the idea of anyone accidentally glancing at PeePee, yet he left her to die by the river early in book one, which is what I always think of when he yet again declares he’ll always find her! 

 

So Lorian and PeePee and the other people with them are headed to the Hybrid kingdom, I’m like 70% sure.  They stop and pick up Fendrel, a young, happy friend of Rhythos who just wants to enjoy life and have some adventures!  And then they’re attacked and Fendrel’s killed.  Nice minor player introduced just to kill him, check.

 

PeePee falls into a tunnel with a big cat, but she’s seen “Predator” so she puts down her weapons and is allowed to live.   She has to go talk to the Hybrid elders who don’t like her, and I’m kind of with them.  They show her the past and talk down to her a bit, then she gets to go back to all the people mourning the very minor character who was killed.

 

The Lorian-PeePee gang are off to the Gobblygook kingdom to get them to join their cause.  Gobblygook’s like, nah.  So PeePee plays some of her genius strategic game moves and they dislike her even more.  I think the Lorian-PeePee gang think it was a success and then they wander off to go find the hourglass, which will give PeePee great time power if she can get over herself long enough to use it.  And Thol shows up, because of course he does.  Honestly, what is with people just showing up?  I guess he’s a hunter blah blah, but still, wtf?  The big bad king killed everyone in their little town because PeePee called it home once.  He’s the only survivor, and it’s like, it means nothing in these, to kill people, why am I going to care about this?  Oh great, now PeePee has to sleep and cry that it’s all her fault.  Yeah, it is. 

 

They then go to a series of caves and wander around for days.  Yes, days.  Like, maybe you all could have used magic to find the location a little more accurately so it wasn’t days walking around in circles underground…oh sorry, please continue walking in circles in the dark. 

 

The caves are laced with Fae iron and booby traps, so they have to be careful as they kill the Iron Guards sent here and there to harass them.  To tire them out!  That’s what the big bad king is doing, he wants to make them sleepy!  And I’m not really sure who cares at this point.  Still, they keep wandering and killing and complaining until they find the hourglass.  They have the hourglass, hurray!  But Cavis grabs PeePee because he’s one of the king’s spiders – spy puppets that are activated by the big bad king as needed.  Cavis asks them to kill him, but they’re like, nah.  They lose their chance and Cavis and PeePee fall into an invisible hole.  Oh and Thol was killed earlier because he was kind of a bad swordsman.