ARC Review: The Tides of Bára by Jeffe Kennedy

Series:	Sorcerous Moons #3
Pub. Date:	Oct. 29, 2016
Publisher:	Brightlynx
Length:	174 pages
Source:	Author

Warning!!! This review will contain spoilers for previous books in the series. If you have not read the first two books, I encourage you to go read them as you will need the previous world building and character development to understand what is happening in this story.

This third installment of the Sorcerous Moons series picks up where Oria's Gambit left off. Oria and Lonen escape Bára with their lives, Lonen's warhorse, and Oria's familiar, Chuffta. Racing off into the desert, they face an uncertain future starting with the fact that it is not believed that Oria will survive outside the walls of Bára. What follows is a long and difficult journey through deadly and dry terrain. 

Being away from the political intrigue of Bára, Lonen and Oria grow closer together by necessity. Lonen remains to be the protective alpha male, trying to take care of Oria and do what's best no matter her resistance and arguments. He is honorable and self-sacrificing, and I can't help but love his character. Oria has changed for me over the course of three books. I started out admiring her intelligence, good judgment and level-head that she evinced in Lonen's War. Then she started to irk me a bit in Oria's Gambit with the way she held Lonen at arm's length. Now in this installment I really didn't care for her much at all in the first 80% or so of the book. She was stubborn, whiny and a almost totally opposite of the character I loved in Lonen's War. I hope that she comes back to her original self in the next book.

I love animals and dragons in my fantasy stories, so I really enjoy Chuffta in this series. He is Oria's familiar, a derkesthai... which I am picturing as one of the baby dragons from Game of Thrones. Only Chuffta is white-scaled and breathes green fire. He also can communicate mind-to-mind with Oria and is not afraid to tell it like it is. I love that he is the sense of reason when she has lost herself to self-pity or fatalism. I also enjoyed Lonen's warhorse in this installment. With Oria's ability to communicate with animals, the horse is starting to get a personality of his own.

I have enjoyed this series to date, and I was not sorry to spend some time on this story. However, I feel that this installment was more filler than adding in any substantive way to the series. I think this journey through the desert would have been better placed as an abbreviated version in the next book rather than trying to stand on its own in this novella. Nevertheless, I am a fan of the series as a whole and I am looking forward to what happens next.

I voluntarily reviewed an advanced copy of this book that I received from the author.

Sorcerous Moons