Through blood and sacrifice, Amora Montara has conquered a rebellion and taken her rightful place as queen of Visidia. Now, with the islands in turmoil and the people questioning her authority, Amora cannot allow anyone to see her weaknesses.
No one can know about the curse in her bloodline. No one can know that she’s lost her magic. No one can know the truth about the boy who holds the missing half of her soul.
To save herself and Visidia, Amora embarks on a desperate quest for a mythical artifact that could fix everything―but it comes at a terrible cost. As she tries to balance her loyalty to her people, her crew, and the desires of her heart, Amora will soon discover that the power to rule might destroy her.
I received this ARC from the publisher in exchange for an honest and voluntary review. I was in no way compensated for this review.
Adalyn Grace brings a conclusion to her high seas fantasy duology with All the Tides of Fate! I truly enjoyed her debut, All the Stars and Teeth, last year and was excited for this next installment, but sadly I found it to be a little laskluster this time around. It was still a pretty decent read, but it just wasn’t all that I was hoping for and felt like it was missing the thrills and adventure that the first book had.
Amora is determined more than ever to break the curse between her and Bastien. She is trying to get into her new role as queen, but it’s hard. She is missing her father and not everyone is ready to accept a queen so young…and if they were to know she didn’t have her magic, well, that wouldn’t be good either. But then she gets a lead, from Blarthe if you can believe it. He says there’s a way for her to get her magic back, she just has to find a particular person who knows the key to breaking said curse. Only trouble is, finding this mythical person.
So Amora decides to cast a ruse that she is going from island to island, a royal tour if you will, where she claims to be looking for a husband. It’s also determined that she needs a husband to help her rule over everything. And naturally, Bastien wants a chance at wooing her too. But, Amora isn’t letting her friends in on her real intentions, she’s keeping it secret, much as she is keeping secret about Blarthe’s whereabouts from Vatea.
As we travel from island to island, it would seem Amora hasn’t made any fans for her first stop has someone trying to kill her. You would think this would make for an intriguing and thrilling development of the story and it does, but it took soooo long to get to that point. And then after that things continue to move at an increasingly slower rate as we travel onto the next island where more surprises await.
Though sadly, the increasingly slower pace wasn’t the only thing that started to bog down on me, but Amora herself. Firstly, I can’t stand liars and that Amora was keeping Blarthe a secret from Vatea for so long upset me. She claims they’re friends, yet kept finding excuses as to why she didn’t want to tell Vatea about Blarthe. And when Ferrick gets in on the secret too, it angered me more because he was wanting to tell Vatea yet still didn’t. Amora just felt a little too selfish in this book. It was all about her getting her magic back, all about fixing and solving her problems. Even wanting to go so far as changing the fates’ design in order to satisfy her needs. I mean I get in a sense that we needed to have Amora struggling, to be devastated by loss, to make poor decisions here and there…it was just too much for me. I guess I wish the severity of her decisions wouldn’t have been so deep because it just made me look poorly on her as our heroine.
I’m sad to even say the romance between Amora and Bastien wasn’t as fierce and fiery this time around. Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of steamy moments, but there was too much of Amora fighting her feelings in between. Again, I got that Bastien holding her magic and a part of herself made her doubt her feelings for him. I get it, truly. I guess I just got annoyed with her hot and cold moments when it came to Bastien. But naturally, things have a way of working out between them. And as I said, I did enjoy their nicer moments together. They truly were cut from the same cloth these two!
The ending was a bit more dramatic than I expected and emotions were to be had. Oh those rotten emotions. Even as I struggled to enjoy this book because of the pacing, that ending sucker punched me good! But the epilogue was by far the best part of it all and I was happy where things were left!
All in all, if you enjoyed Adalyn’s first book, I still highly recommend reading All the Tides of Fate to see how Amora’s journey will come to its unavoidable end. Dare I say there’s the possibility for spinoffs? Or at least for one particular mermaid that I’ve adored since the beginning? I guess time will only tell!
Overall Rating 3/5 stars
All the Tides of Fate releases February 2, 2021
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