This has been a difficult one to cast a review over. The Hand of God which started the serial, was one of the year’s finest debuts and established the author as a premiere writing talent and the Dark Legacies as one of the most intriguing settings to appear for quite some time. With a unique style, a seamless blend of genres and some brilliant world building, it was let down only by a stylistically different start to the rest of the book and some jarring gaps in the narrative. But, ultimately it gelled together exceptionally well, using multiple pov in a well balanced way to give every character a chance to tell the story from their point of view. In the end, we were left on cliffhanger to be resolved eagerly going into book 2.

Or so I thought.

Book two I will say here, feels a bit of a mess after the high standards of book one, especially in structure. The tight story telling, sweeping world building and balanced point of views are—for me—either gone or changed in a way that severely hampers both progression and pacing.

The story begins with a jarring rewind to the missing events halfway through book one and is told from the pov of a newish character, saddled with the over used (by this point) parent issues as just about every other gritty protagonist in the series. On the plus side, this helps explain a gaping hole in the first book and introduces a new faction. Unfortunately this was where things started to derail for me, because 70 pages in and we are backwards on the timeline for a character barely referred to again for the rest of the book.

We then move back to the events continuing from book one, but still ignoring the cliffhanger and get a bit more on one of the protagonists. Another continuous pov chunk, but at least has some value in setting up the various politicking factions of the World and leads into an interesting, but entirely predictable mini twist.

150 pages in, we finally return to the cliffhanger ending and its after effects. From here we slowly start to see a return of some of the characters we have followed, a bit more action and whole lot of internal politics, meetings and squabbling. And plans. Lots of plans. The problem for me here was, I had already begun to detach from the long lead back into the story and unexpected boredom was setting in. The rest of the book spends a lot of time setting up internal strife in the factions and a whole lot of questions, to which there is very little pay off—just more wondering what is going on. Which I found to be distinctly unsatisfying when spread across an entire book.

It isn’t entirely a misfire—I’m still a big fan of the highly evocative setting and there’s a fair amount of well conceived fleshing out of some of the societies (although Cathedral seems bizarrely excluded). The writing itself is also of high standard, although it has lost its tight reign of the story to the extent that by the end, the overall narrative has barely progressed at all. It says a whole lot, but actually delivers very little. Whilst some characters feel strangely sidelined or excluded altogether, others get a much needed investment. It’s an odd balance which didn’t work as well as it could have.

I’m still invested in the series and I still have key questions about the world which feel more important than are seemingly dealt with. I want to know more about how Esther set up her new world. I want to know who this Messiah figure really is. I want to read more about the mech personalities who largely overlooked despite being the most unique and perhaps central characters of all. And I want humanity to overcome its internal battles and fight back into the light against the Hellmouth. If it can return to the tight storytelling, balanced povs and not get lost in the non-linear style and too much politicking, I believe Dark Legacies can restore itself to a remarkable serial. I feel the story will have a lot of heavy lifting to do in the next book though.

One thing is for certain, the author is still an incredible writing talent who isn’t afraid of doing things differently and has created a truly magnificent world to base his story in. For me though, book two entertains, but just falls short of the much higher quality set in book one. ( )