— • 3.5 • —

As usual I was initially torn whether to mark this down as 3 or 4 stars but I think what lets this book down is simply that it’s not as good as Howls Moving Castle.

It was supposed to be a quick read but unfortunately ended up dragging for longer than I expected mainly because nothing in the story really motivated me to keep reading. It’s described as a sequel yet for the first half it has nothing to do with Howl. It’s a completely different story just set in the same world. I would have been okay with that if it was made more apparent beforehand that that’s what it would be like. But instead I was left waiting and wondering if we ever will meet Howl and the others.

Only after about 3 quarters through did we finally meet the likeable characters we’ve been waiting for and from here the pacing did pick up nicely and the ending was enjoyable with lots of cool unexpected surprises. It’s just a shame we didn’t get more of that at the start.

Additionally, the world building was nice as it always is in this series but the story started off feeling a lot like Aladdin and then turned into a long quest like the Witcher just without Geralt at the centre. And honestly I found the main character a little annoying at times.

Finally, In Howls Moving Castle there was an interview with the writer at the end but unfortunately we don’t get one here. It would have been interesting to find more about this side of the world she created.