Book Review: The Pirate's Wish

The Pirate's Wish by Cassandra Rose Clarke is the sequel to The Assassin's Curse, reviewed here. In the interest of remaining spoiler free, I'll keep my summary brief. Pirate Ananna and Assassin Naji are bound together by an impossible curse, which can only be broken by completing three impossible tasks. Less a sequel and more the second half of one story too long to be published in its entirety, The Pirate's Wish follows Ananna and Naji on their journey to break the curse, amidst enemies attacking them on all sides. 

The review:

I loved the first book in this duology. I reviewed it, tweeted about it, and recommended it to dozens of reader friends. I'd been eager for the conclusion ever since I put down the ARC. Clarke builds an amazing relationship between Ananna and Naji, and the first half of this sequel didn't disappoint. She sucked me right back in to their subtle affection and bickering while keeping true to the unique voice and style of her writing. 

But the nature of the story was to slowly reveal how these three impossible tasks were in fact possible, and this is where I had issues with the plotting and pacing. The fantasy genre gives a writer endless possibilities of imagining solutions to problems. But just because an event is plausible inside the rules of the fantasy realm, that doesn't always make it acceptable or satisfying to me as a reader. I have a fine line between wow, that was unexpected but cool and whoa, things just got too crazy for me. Without giving anything away, The Pirate's Wish crossed that line.

Even though the conclusion wasn't quite what I'd hoped, I'll always be a sucker for awesome characters and a steamy romance.

4 out of 5 stars.

Music for today: Love is Blindness by Jack White.