The King's Watch

The Adventures of Carmen Delarosa, Book 2

By: Kody Boye

Narrated by: Rhett Samuel Price

Length: 6 hrs and 35 mins

Publisher's summary

After successfully hunting and slaying the Drake of Ehknac, Carmen returns home to the fanfare of thousands. Declared a hero by the mayor of Ehknac, word of her exploits quickly spreads, but it isn’t until a letter arrives from the king that Carmen realizes the extent of her fame. In this correspondence, he offers her the chance to join the King’s Watch: an elite organization of soldiers that not only protects him, but also his lands. The offer, while tempting, seems too good to be true; and not only will she have to journey to the capital of Dorenborough to audition, but survive on the way there.

©2017 Kody Boye (P)2017 Kody Boye

Not what I was expecting...

This is a good story and a decent followup to the first book, but compounds the problems of the first.

As always, Rhett Samuel Price gives us a fantastic audio performance with great voices, accurate vocal inflections, and skillful tempo shifts.

This book picks up right where the first left off to show us a bit of the return trip.

However, much like the first book what at first seems to have a lot of depth quickly proves to skip over a great many details.

And from there it devolves into what appears to be a long string of wish fulfillment.

When the story finally starts moving again, we get some more investigation of the Dwarven culture, which was interesting, and we get to meet a few new characters.

Unfortunately, much like the first book, Carmen is the only character with any real depth. Most of the others seem to be little more than set dressing. Even Carmen's love interest has a surprising lack of depth.

The result of that, of course, being that when people die it just doesn't have the power or resonance that it should.

It's difficult to tell for certain, but either there are quite a few typos in the text or I'm just mishearing the narrator as he speaks them.

One again, we see modern phrases and technology that just seem out of place, as does the profanity. It's almost as though the author chose to use vulgar language only because they thought it was expected and not because it's the natural tendency of the characters.

Finally, once again I find myself disappointed with the ending. We spent all this time building up to an ending that concludes extremely fast and just doesn't offer the kind of satisfying closure that is needed in a good ending.

Great continuing story of Carmen...

I liked this better than the first book, The Drake of Ehknac: The Adventures of Carmen Delarosa, Book 1 (which I listened to yesterday). This book continues immediately after the end of the last book and Carmen is definitely going from a little girl to an experienced (and enthusiastic) warrior. I do recommend this book (after the 1st).