Forsaken Island by Sharon Hinck
Christian Fantasy. 272 Pages. 4 Stars
Synopsis:
On an uncharted world, happiness is effortless and constant … but can true joy exist without sacrifice?
The people of Meriel have long believed their island world floats alone in the vast ocean universe, so they are astonished when another island drifts into view. With resources becoming scarce, Carya and Brantley quickly volunteer to search the new land for supplies.
After navigating a barrier of menacing trees, the pair encounter a culture of perpetually happy people who readily share their talents and their possessions. But all is not what it seems. At the core of the island is a horror that threatens everyone, including Brantley and Carya.
Freeing the villagers of the bondage they’ve chosen may cost Carya and Brantley more than they could have imagined. Even if the two succeed, they’ll have to find a way to return to Meriel quickly … or be cut off from their home forever.
My Review:
Love this cover!
I was excited to read this one cause I truly did enjoy the first book. I will say, though, that the first book felt pretty complete and didn’t leave off on some huge cliff hanger. This one also stands on it’s own and is a complete story without a cliff hanger to push you to the next one. I just enjoyed the world of the first book and so wanted more of the encouragement and inspiration that the first book offered in the reading experience.
That said, I didn’t quite enjoy this one as much. I think I missed the dancing in this one. The dance magic played such a tiny part here and that’s one of the things I’d hoped to see developed and deepened in the subsequent books. But alas, this one kind of felt like a different story and a little bit of a different world even.
Though, I did really enjoy the new cultures we were exposed to on this new island. It was cool to see how each village segmented different gifts and skills. And I did like that the star rain played a bigger role and that we learned there were different color rains. That was fun. The new island was really cool to explore and probably my favorite part of the book. New cultures and new people and an odd predicament that they faced.
The plot kept me engaged, but lacked the tension I felt in the first one where I really wanted to know what was coming next. That said, I did plow through this one pretty quickly. There were a few things that felt a little predictable–and in fact, one of the grievances I had was how Carya kept assuming the worst in the people and situations around her. She was so doom and gloom and often! She made silly assumptions that I could easily see right through. So, in that regard, sometimes I just rolled my eyes and waited for her to be proven wrong.
But she was also still a beautiful representation of the sweet trust in faith and adoration of worship, and even of the struggle we can have with our faith sometimes when things don’t go the way we hoped. As in the first one, Brantley was still the more intriguing of the two to me. He just felt a little more complex. I would love to have gotten in his head to see his perspective in some situations. I will say the sappy romance got a little too sticky for me in the end (clean, but just a little too much self-doubt, oh he’ll never love me, I’m so unworthy, he reassures her, begin the new cycle, and repeat like four times…)
Some of the new characters were interesting too and left me wanting to know more about them and dig a little deeper into their situations. I’d have loved to explore more of the villages and even spend some time helping them piece their society back together, but the story didn’t really focus on that. I also felt like I had unanswered questions at the end of this book, whereas I did not at the end of the first. I’m hoping the third book will get back to the magic of the first one, though again, admittedly, there were pieces of this sequel that drew my attention.
Content: clean romance, no swearing, some fantasy violence. Thematically, the book explores human emotions (and the absence of them), blindness (and sometimes stubborn belligerence) to poor choices, and how we can sometimes choose our own destruction when we fall away from God’s intended purpose and plan. I’d feel fine giving the book to an early teen.
More:
The first book in the Dancing Realms trilogy is Hidden Current (5 Stars)
The third book is Windward Shore
This series should be read in order; though the second book felt partly like a standalone, it wasn’t entirely. There were still spoilers for the first book and the character journeys make more sense in sequence. I’ve read the sequel, but haven’t yet read the third one. You can click the links above to find more info on Goodreads.
On GraceBought
If you missed it, check out my review on Hidden Current!