Aerie

I read this book a month ago, and I have a review somewhere so when I find it I will update this with the original reviewI bought this book straight after reading Magonia, and I did enjoy reading it (The Cover is gorgeous) but in some ways, I was slightly disappointed.I wish there had been more to the book, more world building, more spent exploring the wonderful imagination Ms Headley has, this world fascinated me, and maybe because it was so pulled in by the wonderful imagination of the first book, that my expectations were too high.but overall I did enjoy it.UPDATE... OK I found where I wrote my review!!! ...its a long one LOL:So I finally found where I wrote my Review… on paper in a notepad! How Retro of me.So these were my thoughts whilst reading the first half of the book:The book starts off with Aza and Jason being on constant alert for something to happen after the ending of Magonia, what exactly will happen is unclear, there are various scenarios to choose from.A year to the day of Aza’s Death (return to Magonia) in Book 1, it happens and the reader is transported into a whirlwind of situations that separate Jason and Aza, secrets are revealed, hearts are crushed and the reader is left wondering how the characters are going to move forward now…. After half Way…I thought I would be writing a 5 star review when I first dived into Aerie, but although I literally hopped online and bought this book after finishing Magonia, which I loved. The review I am writing is difficult – I loved it BUT… I feel slightly let down, its hard to pinpoint why, I gess it was mainly because there was a lack of depth to any of the sequence of events that happened… Sorry I don’t do spoilers, so I can’t go into specific details, but Jason… he went from being the nerd with the answers, to a stalkerish control freak who betrays the love of his life in the pretence of keeping her safe, and I just thought that this was out of character from book 1.Don’t get me wrong, I could understand how he was coursed into do doing it, but I would have thought he would have had a backup plan where he then could counteract the coercion, because he had an answer for everything in book 1. Maybe if there had been more context put into the story to why this happened - but it was added as a footnote explanation.I guess this is the main thing I found frustrating with the book, Ms Headley had the ideas and bones of a fantastic fantasy tale, I guess it reminds me of The Golden Compass (I must get that trilogy and read it – the film was so intriguing, I bet the books awesome – I mean books are always better than the films – 99% of the time – I found the Narnia films better than the books!!!!!!!!!! Oops I am getting off topic)Anyway back to the worldbuilding of this book… It never delved deep enough for me… new creatures are introduced, but no background given, and I wanted more about the characters already introduced in book one, but everything is just skimmed over, and I was left imagining what a fantastic imagination the author has, but that for some reason she has not made these characters whole to the reader… maybe for word count or who knows, but I am disappointed (even a month from finishing)Zal (Aza’s mother) well she was as evil as usual, bent on destroying earth (or the inhabitants of the land) but not much is given about her incarceration or the enhancements that she has now (sorry for being vague – non spoiler remember)Dai (the other part of the love triangle – ugh I hate YA love triangles!) I disliked him from the start in book 1, and still do, he is a cardboard cut-out character, nothing about him in either books made me like him one bit. The Flock, well I think I would have liked more details on this particular part of the story… I would have liked more time learning about ‘The Flock’ than all the angst that’s clutters the story, The part that we are given is interesting, but again its skimmed over with introduction, explanation instead of allowing the reader to get settled into learning about this with Aza… it still remains to me a fill in and an ends to a means to resolve and tie off ends at the conclusion of the book.And in conclusion… the book ended too soon, I had too many questions unanswered and the last two chapters, the first was 6 pages of Jason’s POV and the Last Aza’s POV was just 4.5 pages was jus WAY TOO SHORT, and NO EPILOGUE…there should have been a dam epilogue at least since this is a Dualogy and not a trilogy!There were hints of plans for a future in the last chapter (I guess this may be the novella that is mentioned in Q&A sections) who knows but if this is it… then to be honest it ended up leaving me with a bag full of ‘What was…’ ‘What happened to the …’ etc.About the only thing I didn’t need explaining was the ‘Agency on Earth’s Arrogance, as this was so true to form of Human governments.And this is why finally I gave the book a Solid 3.5 stars because the book makes you think about what we are doing to our world… The series gives a good message for Teens:1) we are destroying the planet that we need to survive on, with plastics, factory farming, polluting our waters and the air we breathe.2) We are intolerant of the species that we share this planet with (I could have said Races of humans, but we take animals for granted too, and this is an eco-system! We are not the be-all and end-all of this planet, we need the rest of the eco system to survive, and I don’t mean just for food!)In conclusion I want to end with that I LOVE THE AUTHORS IMAGINATION, I am just feeling bereft that I couldn’t explore it more, but in the end I know that the people who work for the Publishers also have a say in the book, so I take this into account and I don’t want to be too critical just because I as a reader wanted much, much more.I would recommend this book if you love fantasy that’s full of amazing creatures and gives the reader a message that we need to become more tolerant and ecologically caring as a species.And if you got to this bit…Thanks for reading all of my review, I know it’s Long! ( the original written review was 1035 words long)