First, thanks to St. Martin's Griffin and Edelweiss for allowing me to read an e-galley of this title. I've been a fan of Amanda Hocking since I downloaded a 99 cent e-book of the first book in the Trylle series,
Switched. I read that book while sitting in line waiting for one of the Harry Potter movies one summer. And I was hooked! And I'm pleased to say that I enjoyed returning to this same world as well.
In the Trylle trilogy we spent our time with the Trylles, obviously. But this book deals with the Kanin trolls. It begins with a very intense scene. The main character for this story is Bryn, and the night of a big party in the palace she finds one of the soldiers or guards that she looks up to, Konstantin, attempting to kill her father. She is able to save him, but at the same time she is also wounded. Then we jump ahead to a time when Bryn is a full blown tracker, and something she always has on her mind, to find Konstantin, and find out why he did what he did, and then get justice. Bryn's life isn't always the easiest besides that event that has shaped her career and life. She is only half Kanin, her mother was from a different race of trolls, the Skojari. They are what you would call water beings, many are even born with gills. Because of this their whole way of life is different. But they are also different in that they are light skinned, and have light colored hair compared to the Kanin. So Bryn has blonde hair that sets her apart, and as she grew up, it made her stick out and get bullied even. Because her father married her mother, he lost his title, and so did her mother. This only made Bryn want to be a tracker any more.
It is on what should be a routine tracker job, where Bryn is out to find a Changeling, and prepare them to be brought home to his true parents, that she runs into Konstantin again. He is sitting in a car that has been following the changeling around Chicago. She confronts him and gets into a fight, but he gets away. Once again he leaves her with some cryptic message, like the one he gave her the night he tried to kill her father. She grabs the changeling and gets him back to his parents before the planned time, but to keep him safe, because she doesn't know what kind of danger he might have been in. At first the King and Queen try to say it is a one time occurrence and don't set up a big security change. But soon things will escalate. And now Bryn and her fellow trackers will have to start trying to save all of the changelings, while also figuring out what Konstantin and his cohort are up to. As with any story that has royalty, there is intrigue, and possible mysteries that could go back farther than what it seems with the present time issues.
My only complaint with the book is that it kind of ended abruptly. I tried to turn the page to read what I figured would be a final concluding chapter, only to find out I had read the end. I'll be very eager to read on in this series. I did see people say that they wondered if they had to read the Trylle trilogy first in order to understand it, and I don't really think you do. It was fun to see characters pop up from those books, like Tove and Wendy, but I feel like most things were explained that needed to be explained in order to understand the story.
I definitely recommend this to people who enjoy a good paranormal/fantasy romance. And if you liked the Trylle trilogy, you need to pick this one up as well.
