I really enjoyed the first book in this series so I was really excited about reading its sequel. This book was, however, a big disappointment for me. I had many issues with this book’s messaging; in The House in the Cerulian Sea the message was more metaphorical, us viewing the world through Linus helped us to learn and grow from the prejudices against peculiar children through his and our normal eyes. In this book however, the messaging was not subtle at all and at times felt preachy, the set up - kid asks a convenient question and parent lectures the answer - felt jarring in the pacing. Though I appreciate the message or the meaning behind the message, it didn’t translate well in this book. Throughout all of this the biggest problem for me became how the book ended:

especially since the messaging was so clear about fighting for what’s right and the prejudice against magical people, their solution was.. declaring independence?! And not just any independence but a monarchy! I feel like the messaging feels almost insulting when the solution is basically forcing the problems away (literally) instead of fighting in the civil movement that the book mentioned in passing in the epilogue

. The things I liked in this book were once again the funny and amazing kids, as well as  getting to experience Arthur’s inner turmoil and emotions that were written about so vividly. That is the only reason that lifts this book above two star category for me, sadly.