Lord of Souls by Greg Keyes Release Date: September 27, 2011 Publisher: Del Rey Source: NetGalley Rating: Buy It: Amazon

Reeling from a devastating discovery, Prince Attrebus continues on his seemingly doomed quest to obtain a magic sword that holds the key to destroying the deadly invaders. Meanwhile, in the Imperial City, the spy Colin finds evidence of betrayal at the heart of the empire—if his own heart doesn’t betray him first. And Annaïg, trapped in Umbriel itself, has become a slave to its dark lord and his insatiable hunger for souls.  How can these three unlikely heroes save Tamriel when they cannot even save themselves?

Review
I immediately liked this book better than the first one, I think because I already knew the story and what was at stake.  The dialogue is sharp and sarcastic enough that I laughed multiple times right from the beginning.  I love the intertwining storylines between Annaig and Mere-Glim.  Annaig appears to have grown up very fast.  She’s learned some hard lessons in the kitchens, and she’s discouraged.  Glim, on the other hand, has learned something important and continues leading the skraws’ young rebellion.  Colin the Inspector adds an Imperial element to this quest of rogues.  He’s got a story of his own, but he is mostly searching for the man who put out the hit on Attrebus.  Meanwhile, the Prince is stuck in Oblivion.

Annaig is still having a rough time of it while Glim seems to have found his niche.  Murder and betrayal are all daily events in the kitchens, but Glim has much more freedom.  He makes a friend up in Fringe Gyre, and she feeds him information every once in a while.  There are silly sexual undertones throughout this novel (and by silly, I mean amusing), Glim and his friend on example, Annaig and Attrebus another.  You get the idea that these people like each other, but they’re too busy trying to survive to really get into it.  Speaking of the Prince, he and his Dunmer friend have appealed to a daedric lord and have resumed their search for the sword.  I like Attrebus a lot more than in the last one, and I’ve always liked his friend, Sul.  Plans for destruction and/or escape are being made on all sides.

I think I liked the story best of all this time around.  The last novel was pretty anticlimactic, because there was a lot of character-building going on. The buildup in the last one was good, but this sequel was like nonstop climax until the end (get your mind out of the gutter).  Nothing is really solved and people you love die, but life goes on, even if it’s life on Umbriel.

The Infernal City by Greg Keyes Release Date: November 24, 2009 Publisher: Del Rey Source: Digital Copy Rating: Buy It: Amazon

Four decades after the Oblivion Crisis, Tamriel is threatened anew by an ancient and all-consuming evil. It is Umbriel, a floating city that casts a terrifying shadow–for wherever it falls, people die and rise again.And it is in Umbriel’s shadow that a great adventure begins, and a group of unlikely heroes meet. A legendary prince with a secret. A spy on the trail of a vast conspiracy. A mage obsessed with his desire for revenge. And Annaig, a young girl in whose hands the fate of Tamriel may rest…

Review
Okay, so this is a little esoteric, but I’ll explain.  I am a big fan of role-playing games (RPGs) and The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion remains in my top five video games of all time.  So when I got the opportunity to request the sequel to this one from NetGalley, I jumped at it.  And, if I’m honest, the book turned out to be sillier than I expected, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t enjoyable.  I liked hearing about the familiar places from the game, like Leyawiin and the Imperial City, and the introduction of Black Marsh was interesting as well.  The beginning was so slow as to be boring, though, and I had to slog my way through a lot of talk about things I didn’t understand.  This book takes place forty years after the end of the game, and things have happened that you learn about slowly, which means you are in the dark for a lot of the beginning.  That was frustrating.

I liked the main protagonists, Annaig and Mere-Glim, and I even liked Prince Attrebus, who is sympathetic even while being pathetically naive.  The idea of a floating city, one whose population feeds on the souls of inhabitants on the ground, is an intriguing one, and I found myself wishing I could play it in the game.  There is a bit of telling, not showing going on in this novel, but it’s not overdone nor was it distracting.  There was no real twist, other than a minor one near the end that doesn’t mean much.  The narrative goes between Annaig and Attrebus, and it flows quite nicely without any jarring transitions.  I really enjoyed reading about the things that happened in Cyrodiil after the game was over.

And that’s it, really.  This was a nice story, but nothing groundbreaking, nothing I couldn’t put down.  I read the book in a day because it was just so…easy.  It didn’t challenge me, but I enjoyed it well enough.  I want to warn that those who haven’t played an Elder Scrolls game may not understand what’s going on, because Keyes absolutely does not summarize the gameplay from Oblivion, and names are thrown in there with the expectation that the reader will already know them (Martin Septim, for example).  Still, if you like this sort of thing, like me, this one is a nice easy read that will keep you entertained until the end.