kingdom of copper

This is book 2 of the Daevabad Trilogy by S. A. Chakraborty. I had taken this book out a few weeks ago by mistake, not knowing it was book 2, so I returned it and got the first one. By the time I read that one and returned it, this book was lent out, but through the magic of the inter-library loan program, I got an email a day later that this book had arrived from one of the other libraries in the North of Boston Library Exchange (NOBLE) network. if you haven't been to the library, then go--a few times--and see what they can do

Sometimes the second book in a trilogy feels like filler, or just a bridge between the intro in book 1 and the climax in book 3, but this one didn't feel like that, and I think that is especially nice given that this is the first work of this author, who now goes by her given name Shannon Chakraborty. 

Any great adventure story has something difficult for the protagonist(s) to overcome; the big baddie, the evil plot, the end of the world, and this one is no different. The Kingdom of Copper fleshes out the personalities of the main characters, tests their resolve, and uncovers parts of their personalities that didn't come to light, or at least not so clearly, in the first book. This volume also introduces the big problem. And its much bigger than we were lead to believe in the first book. 

This one ends in an almost literal cliffhanger, so while the idea is that each book in a trilogy can or could be read independent of the others, this one does leave you hanging. But I was also left looking forward to the last book in the trilogy (which I took out from the library at the same time, and I am currently reading!)