Dreamdark Silksinger, by Laini Taylor

A few days later than promised, and it's going to be short, because it's 2am and I'm leaving for Hawaii tomorrow (but if I'm sleep-deprived I'm more likely to sleep on the plane, right?), but here's the review of the second book in Laini Taylor's Fairies of Dreamdark series.

"Whisper Silksinger knew two kinds of death."

Great opening line, neh? Silksinger continues the story of Magpie Windwitch trying to fix the Tapestry of Creation, but Taylor introduces two new characters. Whisper and Hirik are entirely different from Magpie and Talon: shy, reluctant heroes who are thrust into a quest and have a hard time believing they are capable of achieving it. Their story forms a nice counterpart to Magpie and Talon's on-going action-hero saga. We still get to see plenty of our favourite characters from Blackbringer, and we learn more about this world and its history. There's another great bad guy who I won't say anything about so as not to spoil it, and there's Slomby, who has to pick the leeches off the firedrakes. There's failure and betrayal and people doing things you never thought they would. This story arc gets completed, but the world isn't saved yet, so we can happily anticipate at least one more fascinating, original story about characters I absolutely love.

I'm going to go with beef short ribs as my food metaphor, probably because I recently saw a recipe that looked delicious that I want to try (Braised Short Ribs with Potatoes and Apples Risotto-style). Think sweet-salty-meaty, sink-your-teeth-in, hearty. (I just checked, and I said Blackbringer was like Lamb Tagine, so I'm sticking with the theme here!)

Note: Do not look at the fairies pictured on the front cover and think that you don't want to read this book because it's about fairies. Trust me, these are no fairies you've ever imagined. (I do love the cover, though.)