An Echo of Things to Come (The Licanius Trilogy)

I enjoyed the philosophy of this book and its characters quite a bit. There are plenty of nuanced questions asked, while also offering criticism that can be related to both the story and the real world.

A good second entry into the series, although I just didn't get as hooked by this one. The world is still interesting and it is cool to follow different characters in this second entry. The events move you through the book, but I often found myself wondering if the author was driving the character or the character actually wanted to do something.

The exploration of morals is there, the characters dealt with challenging ideas, and yet I didn't feel like any of the ideas or themes got strongly fleshed out in a way other than 'that's bad'.

So giving this a solid 3... maybe a 3.45.

Do you like books with characters? This book has lots of them. They'll probably do some fantasy stuff and you'll live vicariously through them. There's good guys, bad guys, good guys that are actually bad guys... and wait for... guys that seem like bad guys, but maybe they're not so bad after all. Or are they? Dun dun dun!! I bet people will also learn about powers that have, grow over time, experience pain and joy and come against a great force. Plus even more stuff probably happens.

Listen, it'll distract you from the crippling loneliness for a while. Read it.

After really enjoying the first book in the series - and reading it quickly - this book just dragged. It was hard for me to connect the two stories together. Changing the format to four main characters and then introducing new plot twists for each. It made me think of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time. I hope Mr. Islington doesn't extend this to 13 books.

I certainly expected better editing from a purchase as expensive as this.
At times the writing and vocabulary devolved to about the 7th grade level. A more price would have been $4.95 for this level of quality and consistency.

I regret buying this as an audiobook. This book is very confusing. Names of characters all sound the same, some characters have 2 or 3 different names, the book bounces around from characters at different locations and then back thru time in flashbacks (sometimes using a new name for the same character during the flashback). Without a transition, the story was just talking about one character then suddenly the story shifted to a new person with a similar sounding name in a new place - as if I know what just happened. Too many times I found myself thinking "who is this again?" "what were they doing????"...... It is the first book ever that I stopped half-way through and have utterly given up on. I might decide to start it over again, but not before someone makes a Wikipedia or something explaining the main characters and plot of this book. It's just too confusing to follow in audio format....

I really enjoyed the first in the series. It felt like someone had tried really hard to get a Game of Thrones feeling into a book series that was appropriate for a younger audience, and succeeded admirably. This installment, while keeping many of the same elements, struggles greatly with timelines, locations, and generally picking up from the first book without the readers being lost.

There are so many characters and locations with similar names (for example, there are three? four? male character with two syllable names that start with "A" and are "good guys"), yet there is a lack of consistency in the naming to help us separate these things into groups (ie: there's no "Klingons" with names that sound "Klingon" from planets with names that sound "Klingon", it is more like some Vulcans have Klingon sounding names, from planets with human sounding names...).

None of these are critical flaws of course! The story itself was rather enjoyable, there were fairly frequent, impactful, and well-handled deaths throughout, and I am looking forwards to the completion of the story in the next book. But these issues did impact my experience as a reader enough to knock a star off from an otherwise enjoyable book, and that's rare for me to do.

J.Ja

James Islington has a talent for creating complex characters that differ from each other, and have unique human faults that make them believable and real. This creates interactions that blends there narratives together to create a great story where victory has a price. I

I loved the first book tremendously and was looking forward to the sequel. I have become slightly disappointed with this series. The character interaction that made the first novel team with life is lacking here. It seems more fictional and unrealistic to the characters personalities as built in the first novel.

Where the complication and twits in the first novel added interesting plot twists that bound situations together and wanted to make you know more, I feel that James Islington is complicating the series needlessly with plot twists that will be explained out so far in the future (book 5 or 6 at the earliest) that readers will need to come back to previous novels just to remember what happened. This promises a story that I believe will become to stretched out with out a satisfying end.

I hope James Islington will not water down his story this way.

SPOILER WARNING: This review contains spoilers for the first book of this series.
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AN ECHO OF THINGS TO COME is the second book in James Islington's Licanius trilogy. I loved the first book of this series when I read it last year so I was impatiently looking forward to this one.

We pick up fairly soon after the events of the previous book; our heroes are settling into their new roles working against the impending invasion. Davian is at Tol Shen where he hopes to gather Augurs to help repair the spells protecting the Boundary, Wirr, the new Northwarden, is fighting an uphill battle to convince a resentful Administration that he can be trusted as their leader. Asha advocates for the failing Boundary to be taken seriously at court, and Caeden uses his portal box to finally get some answers about who he is and what his plan was before wiping his own memory.

All the characters have good arcs in this book, although Caeden's is the most interesting for the same reason that Memento is such a compelling movie (and an arc in a certain anime that I don't want to name since it would be a spoiler). The trope of a character making plans that involve them losing all knowledge of the plan but still succeeding has been done before but it's executed skillfully here. It goes well enough that we appreciate Caeden's foresight but there are a lot of variables involved and it would have been hard to suspend disbelief if it had been realized perfectly. The slow reveal of his flashbacks gives you just enough to be satisfied to wait until the next one happens but still eagerly anticipating the continuation.

The previous book had many scenes that were reminiscent of the Brandon Sanderson and Robert Jordan books it's so clearly inspired by, (much like how THE EYE OF THE WORLD borrowed heavily from Tolkien). This book steps out of their shadow and feels considerably more original while still maintaining the comforting classic fantasy tone that made the last one so good. It's a slower book than the first, though; it's clearly setting up plots and characters for the third book. Some subplots dragged on for a little too long, especially Davian's difficulties with a new Augur at Tol Shen, but it was a well structured book otherwise. And it answered a bunch of open questions about the world and its history which I wasn't expecting until the last book, so that was great.

Now I get to wait impatiently all over again for the third book, THE LIGHT OF ALL THAT FALLS.

Way Mr. Islington tells a story, is something worty of a note. There are no easy answers, no stuffing the plot down to readers throat with needless explanations. You read, read and only vaguely grasp outlines of bigger story there. But somehow, authors does not lose track of it like many others do when trying hand at epics. There is still sense of purpose, thread, inevitability deep and murky plot when you read it. Recommend and waiting for next part.

I really like these books. James Islington knows how to tell a story, and a good one at that. From a quality perspective, I think it's fully comparable to the Stormlight Archive and The Dresden Files. I think it's superb when comparing it to the Age of Myth, Dawn of Wonder, the Gentleman Bastards, Mistborn and the Codex Alera. I also find it very slightly inferior to the Kingkiller Chronicle, Elantris, and the Broken Empire trilogy. But that's just my two cents, and I'm sure many would disagree.

Most of the Fantasy genre is filled with repetitive themes and knock offs from LOTR and other stories.

This story is entirely original. I never predicted the outcomes, the twists and turns, or the individual characters’ choices. However, the story doesn’t come off as the author trying to fool you. The characters all make the best decisions they can in their situations.

I think my favorite aspect of the series, and especially this book, is how it examines the choices of good men and rationalizes those of bad men, and the concepts of ‘the greater good’ or ‘the lesser of two evils’.

Believe me, this story will lead to some intense introspection.

Most of the Fantasy genre is filled with repetitive themes and knock offs from LOTR and other stories.

This story is entirely original. I never predicted the outcomes, the twists and turns, or the individual characters’ choices. However, the story doesn’t come off as the author trying to fool you. The characters all make the best decisions they can in their situations.

I think my favorite aspect of the series, and especially this book, is how it examines the choices of good men and rationalizes those of bad men, and the concepts of ‘the greater good’ or ‘the lesser of two evils’.

Believe me, this story will lead to some intense introspection.

Way Mr. Islington tells a story, is something worty of a note. There are no easy answers, no stuffing the plot down to readers throat with needless explanations. You read, read and only vaguely grasp outlines of bigger story there. But somehow, authors does not lose track of it like many others do when trying hand at epics. There is still sense of purpose, thread, inevitability deep and murky plot when you read it. Recommend and waiting for next part.