⭐⭐⭐

Gemma, war monk and the newly crowned Queen Keely’s sister, joins up with the Amichai warrior Quinn in the second book in The Scarred Earth Saga series. Queen Keely, her family, and her allies are still trying to figure out what their sister, Beatrix, is up to, and in the process uncovers another enemy that wants to destroy them.

Gemma is a very interesting character. She has fought in many battles and killed many foes; she is not afraid of violence at all. When the war monks ask her to leave, she feels adrift and has to find a new purpose for herself. Quinn is very devil-may-care pretty much all the time. But he does come through in a fight when he is needed. Gemma and Quinn constantly snipe at each other, and it seems that there is no love lost between them, but they can’t seem to stay away from each other either. When they do get together, my thought was finally! The back-and-forth between them is funny and engaging most of the time, some of the time it comes across as childish.

There are loads of epic battles, lots of magic thrown around, and things don’t always go the way our heroes want them to go.

I give it a three, because I wasn’t all that enamoured of the writing at times, and the dialogue tended to devolve a bit. It is a very interesting world, nonetheless, and I would love to continue the series.

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for providing me with an ARC. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Was I hooked by this book? Yes.

Genre: Paranormal Romance