A Noble's Path (The Enchanted Isles, #2)

Divided loyalties test Inez Garza.
The infamous incident at the Academy of Natural Studies has forced her to work for the King’s Men while continuing to serve the hidden market.
Supporting Birthright furthers the cause of Magical Return, but the cost may be the fall of the royal house and losing Zavier forever.
And the strongest pull of all is her growing and erratic magic, which demands everything and offers only destruction in return.
Inez must decide where her loyalties lie—saving Canto or saving herself.

Rating:

Many thanks to the author for a copy in exchange for an honest, unbiased review.

After reading the first book, I was very ready to pick this up and dive back into this world.

I have no regrets. Okay, maybe one: that I can’t be a smuggler along with Inez and Jacque. Sure, it’s dangerous, but if I weren’t so clumsy, I’d still jump at the chance. But honestly, nobody wants that the way I am now, considering I have all the grace of a rhino.

A Noble’s Path is a solid sequel, replete with secrets and mystery and lies and danger. You know, all the interesting things in life. And gosh, what an ending!

I need book three now, please. Because this does end on a bit of a cliffhanger, and the sort I’ve been waiting for since meeting Inez.

❧ Inez is back, but this time with magic, and boy does that complicate things.

Because what is one to do now that they have forbidden magic coursing through their veins? I mean, okay, I know what I would probably do, but I’m also likely an outlier, and I don’t recommend anyone follow my example. For Inez, though, this poses quite the problem, and she suffers a little from carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders, whether she needs to or not. She’s not even caught between two worlds. She finds herself firmly at the nexus between multiple worlds, any of which could lead to the untimely demise of herself (or someone else) should she slip up. So, you know, no pressure at all.

A lot of this book is about magic and understand what magic can do and what it means to have magic.

It’s part self-discovery, plus delightful display of ability. After the first book, one of the things I was really looking forward to was seeing the magic in action, and this book didn’t disappoint!

❧ This book focuses a lot on romance, and if that’s your thing, you’ll likely appreciate the attention it’s given.

For me … eh. I’m not big on romance, though, so it’s not generally the reason I pick up a book in the first place. I’m especially not one for the will they/won’t they (and there are two of those here). It just makes me want to shake some sense into the characters.

The one thing I really did like about the romance, though, was how Inez is given room to decide what she wants for herself … or what is and isn’t worth fighting for. Emotions are confusing, especially at that time of life. Especially given the social constraints. I think Inez’s inner turmoil rung true, and I very much appreciated that it wasn’t, “Well, we love each other, so hang all the rules and everything else because who cares.” These characters are still firmly rooted in the world they live in, and that has repercussions for their lives and, yes, even their romances.

❧ All my favorite side characters are back, and it just made me love them even more!

Inez tends to be a bit of a loner (which, fair, it sort of goes with her chosen profession), but little by little, these characters have wormed their way into her life … and into my heart. They’re so adorable. How can you not just love them? Toman is charming in his own way. Jacque is … yes. Can you wish a smuggler gets his own happily ever after? Because he deserves it. And Meiri? Meiri is delightful and really comes into her own in this book.

❧ This book doubles down on the fairy tale vibe with the case of Beau Piar’s missing sheep!

I giggled. How can you not? It’s so recognizable, yet so clever and fun. One of the things I really enjoy about this series is trying to pick out where the influences of fairy tales are. I’m sure I miss quite a few of them, but I’m always excited when I manage to find one!

The mystery was a little slow to get started, and there’s a lot of little threads to sort through at first, but once it gets ramped up, I didn’t want to stop until it was solved!

Because phew, there are a lot of little moving parts, and they eventually piece together, but it was definitely a journey. The mystery, for me, was the strongest part of this book, because I’m a fan of uncovering secrets. Especially insidious ones.

❧ There’s some foreshadowing and hints that something big is about to happen in the kingdom of Canto, and it has me looking forward to the third book all the more.

If there were a theme of this book, it would be shaking things up. Even though the kingdom has a structure and order, these characters aren’t exactly living up to their role in it. And boy does that make people mad. I, on the other hand, love it.

My one qualm with this is it feels like certain things were brought up and just … set to the side for a while. I expected them to have a bigger role in this book, given how they were presented and how much time was spent on them, but they didn’t.

In the end, I suppose it’s something to look forward to in the next book, so … stay tuned?

❧ Maybe it’s because I immediately went from the first book to the second, but this one feels a little repetitive and rehashes things a lot.

I guess this depends on the sort of reader are. If you like a lot of little reminders about what happened in the previous book, this will work well for you. I tend to be more of a detailed reader, and I retain a lot, so I didn’t need so many reminders. Although, again, I read these books back-to-back, so that might have something to do it with it, too. Maybe I’d feel differently if there’d been a year’s gap between them. There were definitely moments where I’d read a summarizing statement and think, haven’t I read some version of this already in this book?

This is also totally personal preference, but I’m not a fan of a ton of flashbacks that pull us out of present action.

This is really a me, thing, and I suspect this probably doesn’t bother a lot of other readers, but I’m so easily distracted. There are quite a few times when something is happening in the present, and that action is paused to reminisce on something that happened a day or two ago, and a little scene of that, and then pulled back to the present action. My brain just has trouble following that, and I often end up losing the present while we’re in the past.

About I.L. Cruz

I.L. Cruz decided to make writing her full-time career during the economic downturn in 2008. Since then she’s used her BA in International Relations to sow political intrigue in her fantasy worlds and her MA in history to strive for the perfect prologue. When she’s not engaged in this mad profession she indulges her wanderlust as often as possible, watches too much sci-fi and reads until her eyes cross. She lives in Maryland with her husband, daughter and a sun-seeking supermutt named Dipper.

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If you discovered you had illegal magic, what’s the first thing you would do with it?