I am so impatient when it comes to waiting for the sequel in a series I really enjoyed, but this book was completely worth the wait as it had me completely invested and not wanting to put it down from the start.
Despite the time it’s been since I was last in this world, as soon as I started this book it was like I had never left it and I was completely enmeshed in the lives of these characters the author has created, worried for them with the events taking place, wanting the best for them and biting my nails as I watched them endure their personal struggles.
Seeking Beyond the Flames was an emotional ride for me. It had such real mental health rep and reading Davyna’s struggles was touching and resonated for what it was. She spends a lot of this book fighting her own darkness, in a state of mental anguish that helps her darkness rise to the surface and has her pushing away the people who matter the most to her, isolating herself and letting the darkness win. As a result much of Davyna’s point of view is her struggling with this battle and letting her demons win, and it felt so real and honestly had me breaking for her, and made it impossible not to connect with her. I gained such a renewed sense of bonding with Davyna, and frankly the other characters as well because their emotions were just so fraught and real, impossible not to latch onto and feel myself while reading.
Kadeyan continued to shine as a character as well. My heart broke for him countless times and I just fell in love with him all over again over his blinding love for Davyna. For me it’s the fact that he doesn’t love her despite her darkness, but loves her darkness and all. He has his own darkness that resonates with her own and it’s just one more reason their relationship is so pure and beautiful, as they can accept every aspect of one another and not just the good things. The struggles he has to endure throughout this book were one more reason to feel a connection to him and hurt for him with the pain he must endure, one more reason the characters were such a strength for this book and one of my favourite parts.
As for the story, it was action packed. There were a lot more battles/fighting in this book with oodles of strife going on in the lands involved in this world. It meant there were no lulls in the plot as things kept coming one after the other, between the characters and their internal struggles, the fighting occurring between different groups which have become very bloody, and the insidious forces that are behind some of the problems taking place in this sequel. There is a new big bad and much havoc is wreaked as a result. But there is also a lot going on as far as Davyna’s background and new information coming to light. Learning all the new information there was to digest from this book had me even more hooked to the story, and quite frankly wanting to know even more about this world as a whole.
Then there’s the ending. It. Broke. Me. I’m talking I wasn’t expecting to have my emotions wrung out and beaten with a stick so thoroughly, and yet here I am, struggling to move on from what I just read and needing to take more than a minute to process what I just read. I don’t know how I’m going to wait for the third book because I am absolutely beside myself at the moment and desperately in need of more of this story, and more of this world. Honestly, this second book beats the first, Hidden Beneath the Embers, for me. I highly recommend this series!
