Seeds of Rebellion by Brandon Mull (Book 2 of Beyonders)

483 pages

"Jason Walker needs to find a way back to Lyrian. Rachel remains stranded there, and Jason has precious information that the friends he left behind must learn in order to have any hope of surviving and defeating the evil emperor Maldor.

When he finally succeeds in returning to the strange and imperiled world, Jason immediately finds himself in more danger than ever as the most wanted fugitive on the continent. Meanwhile, Rachel has begun to discover new abilities of her own that may prove vital against Maldor's tyranny.

In the aftermath of a failed quest, a new mission arises--to assemble the remaining heroes of Lyrian. Can the necessary allies be convinced before the emperor crushes the young uprising? Jason, Rachel, and their band of battered heroes will face new enemies and demanding obstacles as they strive to launch a desperate rebellion." -Dust Jacket

{MINOR SPOILERS}

This is the second book in the trilogy and, as is typical of middle books, it's the filler. That doesn't mean it's not a great read--in fact that are a lot of deep life-lesson tidbits that bring quite a bit of depth to this story--it just means that you get a lot of traveling around, small adventures, and collecting/preparing the necessary people for the third book where you will get the real confrontation between Maldor and Galloran and company. (My money's on Galloran. He's Beyonders' Aragorn.) My problem was that I haven't read the first book since last year when it first came out and I've read a lot in between. I couldn't remember specifics about some of the characters and it made it hard to follow along for the first half of the book. I kept thinking that maybe I should stop and re-read the first book again. I still think I should do that and then read this one again.

I've said before that Brandon Mull is one of my favorite authors because I really like him as a person. He's also a good writer and only getting better I think. Fablehaven was great, but I think I like this one better. Brandon is skilled at writing likable characters, but also characters that are rich and multi-faceted. He always has at least one character that provides comic relief and Ferrin does that in this series, but he and Jason have a very enlightening and serious conversation that really showed, in a rather heartbreaking way, the internal struggles that afflict Ferrin. He's not just all jokes and removable body parts. He is genetically-engineered to serve Maldor. That's why the displacers (his race) were created. He has grown so accustomed to using and betraying those around him. It's so second nature to him that you really feel like he doesn't know whether or not he will be true to Galloran's cause or whether or not he even believes in it. I think he will have a significant part to play in the conclusion of this story.

Brandon Mull is also great at creating fantasy characters. There are some good ones in this book--the worm zombies, the tree people, the drinlings and of course the people of the seed. This book ended with the oracle's prophecy about the outcome of the rebellion and I like the direction Mull appears to be going with it. There is some foreshadowing that several of the main characters will have some hard times ahead in the fight against Maldor. While I've grown to love each character, I also think that a true, classic story of good versus evil never ends with all the good guys surviving. War means sacrifice and doing hard things. That's what defines bravery and these characters are plenty brave. I fully expect to cry in the third book...next spring!



*During that long wait there are some good books coming out: Insurgent, a sequel to Divergent, my favorite dystopian novel of last year, City of Lost Souls, which is a guilty pleasure 5th book in The Mortal Instruments, and The Drowned Cities, a companion book (not necessarily sequel?) to Shipbreaker, not my favorite book because I felt like it fell short of its possibilities but with enough promise that I'll probably read this other one.