Glass Sword

Title: Glass Sword

Series: Red Queen - book 2

Author: Victoria Aveyard

Rating: 5 stars

Genre: Young Adult, Fantasy

Number of Pages: 442

Publisher: Orion Books

Publication Date: 2016

Summary: Mare's blood is red, but her unique Silver ability - the power to control lightning - has turned her into a weapon that the Silver court will do anything to control.

As Mare escapes the cluthes of Maven, the prince - and friend - who betrayed her, she discovers something shocking: she is not the only one of her kind.

Pursued by Maven, no a vindictive king, Mare sets out to find and recruit other Red-and-Silver fighters.

But Mare is treading a deadly path, at risk of becoming exactly the kind of monster she is trying to defeat. Will she shatter under weight of the lives that are the cost of rebellion? Or have treachery and betrayal hardened her forever?

Glass Sword begins right where it left off. The last sentence of Red Queen and the first sentence of Glass Sword follow each other almost as if you have started a new chapter not another book. Not many authors do this but I found that I loved it. Rather than waiting for the story to pick up again so I could get back to the amazing world that Victoria Aveyard has created, it was like I never left.

I want to say so much about this book but I won't because I don't want to spoil this for anyone. 

Glass Sword has one very interesting theme that runs through out it, especially towards the end. A theme that is often touched in many books which involve uprisings but never in quite this much clarity and detail. 'At what point do your actions stop becoming that of saving others and instead become the first steps that your enemy once took themselves with the same ideals'. This is something that is really clearly seen and something that the characters struggle with. A lot of thought and planning has gone into how the characters will face such a challenge.

But the thing I loved the most about this book and about Victoria Aveyard's writing is that she holds no punches. Victoria is a brave writer and if she wants to put something in her books she will. This means that certain parts of her books can get very dark, the characters can be shockingly cruel but most importantly she creates characters that are so uniquely diverse and different you actually feel like you are meeting truly different individuals and not just characters with slightly different personalities that give the illusion of different.

Glass Sword is perhaps the best sequel novel I have ever read and I can't wait to see what happens next...