Elisa's Reviews > Glow of the Everflame

** spoiler alert ** I'm really enjoying this series and I will definitely read the next books too, but I liked this second book less than the first: I think it's way too long, very little happens and I have mixed feelings about Diem. Anyway, I like the premise of this story so much, that I'm looking forward to reading the third book.

(Attention spoilers)

What I loved:

Sorae: My favourite character!! Perfect adviser in everything! Even in fashion! Loved it.

Luther: (Perhaps too perfect?) So wonderful that, as far as I'm concerned, there's not even a love triangle because of him. Henry doesn't hold a candle.

This world and its history: I hope it will be described in more detail. I would like to know about the ancient gods, the Blood war..

The visions and all the secrets: I can't wait to know everything!!

What I didn't like:

I believe the book could have been at least 200 pages shorter. The story dragged too much, for me. Especially the part of the diplomatic meetings with the other families of the kingdom.

Diem: sometimes I like her and sometimes I don't... I love her courage and her love for others, her selflessness, but I don't understand some of the choices she makes. They're incomprehensible and very immature. She blindly trusts some of the Corbois cousins, from the beginning, without ever questioning their sincerity, but not with Luther. She always seems to change her opinion, despite him showing her many times how much he cares about her and how ready he is to serve her as queen.
At some point she says to him:

"Stop trying to be my advisor, Luther. Be my friend."

And then, a few lines later, she says to herself:

"I wondered if he would make the same offer if he knew Henri had sworn to kill him. If he knew I had sworn to kill him, too."

WTF, DIEM! You've just asked him to be your friend!!

And what about their first kiss??

“I didn’t kiss you,” I hissed, whirling to face him, “you kissed me. Maybe I didn’t push you off as quickly as I should have"

...yeah, sure, Diem. You were so very slow at pushing him off, that in the meantime you had time to put your fingers through his hair and wrap yourself around his body...

Anyway, since from the beginning of the first book she's been in denial about her Descended nature, I can accept that she's also in denial about her feelings for a Descended man that she doesn't completely trust...

In many situations I found Diem very naive and immature and this contrasted a lot with the image of Diem as a healer, I think.
Towards the end of the novel, when she helps the Guardians once again by showing them how to get out of the castle by boat I would have literally screamed!!

With Henry she behaves very immaturely... Even before discovering that she is Descendant she knows she doesn't want to marry him and doesn't love him, but when she becomes queen, in order not to lose him, she proposes to marry him and make him king consort!! I understand the fear of change, her wanting to cling to her previous life and not accept that part of herself that she has recently discovered and which belongs to a world that she detests, I also understand that it may have served to slow burn, because in this way Diem was even more inaccessible to Luther, but it is a choice that I found very silly and out of the character that I thought she was.

However, what I really don't understand about this book and Diem in particular is how she never asked and never investigated the words that both the queen of Umbros and the late king said to her before he died. At the beginning of this book he says these mysterious words to her that she had already partly heard from the queen of Umbros in the first book, but for almost all of the 600 plus pages of this book she practically forgets them, it doesn't occur to her that they might be important, that the fact that she has eyes the same color as the Kindreds is curious and that maybe it means something. I understand wanting to lengthen the story for future books, but I found Diem's ​​lack of interest really absurd.

Other than that... everything else I really liked and I'm super curious. That's why I wish I liked Diem more. I really hope she becomes more mature and sensible in the next books.