I had not read any Lesley Livingston before 'Starling' and 'Descendant,' but I am now going to have to go back and look at her Faerie trilogy ( Wondrous Strange, Darklight and Tempestuous), just to get the background story on the Fennrys Wolf.

The major characters from 'Starling' are back in various forms, and several new players are introduced who have the potential to be game-changers. The action is taking place on several fronts, and we begin to understand how complex this web of plots, power-brokering, and temporary alliances really is. 'Descendant' is told from multiple points of view, and I think that adds to the story. The ending caught me completely by surprise, and the stage is certainly set for an dynamic final installment. The first book set up the story, and this second book seemed to be all about repositioning the players. The audiobook is narrated by the author, and she does a fantastic job with it. The story in this book picks up right where the first one ended, and the pacing is excellent throughout. 'Descendant' was a great follow-up to Starling. I’ve debated a bit over this rating, but given that I liked it a lot more than Starling, and I burnt quite a few calories on the treadmill whilst reading it, I’m going to give it a generous… There were a couple of surprising events though, and quite a bit of a cliff-hanger at the end! The ending to this was once again quite action packed, and whilst focused I actually liked it. There was some romance in this, and there was even a cute reunion between Fennyrs and Mason that was nice. This book was far from perfect though, it was confusing at points, it dragged, and I really did have to remove all other distractions to even stand a chance of focusing on this, I couldn’t even listen to it on text-to-speech without totally blocking it out! Whilst on my treadmill, and thus free of all other distractions, I actually found myself focusing a bit more on this, and actually understanding what was going on! I have to say that I seem to be a bit of an adrenalin junkie at times, and I really like a bit of action. The storyline in this did lag at points, and I found some of the info-dumps a bit heavy going, I did like the action though, and I did find myself getting a bit more into this one than the previous book. Ending up in Hell, bumping into your dead mother, not knowing if your boyfriend is dead, and having little idea of how to get home can’t have been easy!

Mason wasn’t the brightest spark in this book, and she did allow herself to be led at times, but given the situation I could kind-of forgive this a bit. I wasn’t the biggest fan of the first book in this series, but other than some confusing moments, I actually liked this one a lot more.

Transcendent by lesley livingston