'Through blood and sacrifice, Amora Montara has conquered a rebellion and taken her rightful place as queen of Visidia. Now, with the islands in turmoil and the people questioning her authority, Amora cannot allow anyone to see her weaknesses.
'No one can know about the curse in her bloodline. No one can know that she’s lost her magic. No one can know the truth about the boy who holds the missing half of her soul.
'To save herself and Visidia, Amora embarks on a desperate quest for a mythical artefact that could fix everything―but it comes at a terrible cost. As she tries to balance her loyalty to her people, her crew, and the desires of her heart, Amora will soon discover that the power to rule might destroy her.'
All The Tides of Fate returns readers to the kingdom of Visidia in the exiting follow up to 2020's All The Stars And Teeth.
The first book in this series was a sprawling adventure that saw Amora, the heir to the kingdom of Visidia, having to gather a small crew of allies and travel to a remote island to fight for her future against a warlord beset on destroying everything she held dear. It was grand, the stakes were huge, and it had a sense of being about more than just the characters we were spending time with, and more about the fate of the entire kingdom. Because of that I was somewhat taken by surprise when I started reading All The Tides of Fate and found that the second book seemed much smaller in scale, and focused more on the people involved than the adventure that they were going on.
This book finds Amora now the queen of Visidia, following the events at the conclusion of the first book, and now in a position to try and make amends for the things that her family has done in the past, and to help those places in her kingdom she travelled to in the first book, the places that are struggling to survive. And on the whole, it seems like Amora is doing quite well. There are improvements being made across Visidia, and people have happily taken to being allowed to learn more than one type of magic.
Despite this, however, things aren't going well for Amora. Not only is she still suffering from post traumatic stress from the loss of her father, but her soul remains split in two, with part of it being cursed inside of Bastian. Not only does this mean that the two of them can't be too far apart from each other, but it also means that Amora can no longer use her soul magic. To make matters worse, some people within her kingdom have started to suspect that there might be something wrong with their new queen, and descent has begun.
In order to put a stop to the rumours spreading about her, and to try and win over the people, Amora agrees to go on a tour of the islands to find a suitor to marry. However, this is all pretence on her part, as she has learned of the existence of an artefact that might allow her to break the curse upon her, and is determined to track it down, using the bachelor tour as a cover.
One of the things that feels immediately different about this book is that there doesn't seem to be a sense of urgency to things like there was in the first book. In the first book Amora had a mission that took her across her kingdom and put her in danger, just like in this book, but it always felt like she was rushing from place to place then, whereas here hings seem to take a more leisurely pace. This isn't a bad thing, however, as it allows the characters more time to interact with each other, and the interpersonal relationships seem to be given more time in the spotlight, and seem to be a more important part of this journey. It's less about getting somewhere and finding something, and more about how this journey changes those involved.
As well as getting the old crew back together, Bastian the dashing rogue, Ferrick the loyal advisor and best friend, and Vatea the deadly mermaid, Amora is also joined by two new crew members, Casem and Shanty. These two new characters fit into the crew really easily, and it doesn't alter the existing dynamic too much, feeling instead like they should have always been a part of the adventure. Shanty in particular is a great addition, and her illusion magic makes her one of the more versatile members of the team, as well as a character with an interesting backstory that you want to learn more about. Much like the first book, however, the stand out is definitely Vatae, the deadly mermaid who has become friends with the humans and decided to stick around with them on their adventures. Other than Amora she's probably the character who goes on the biggest emotional journey in this book and I loved how she evolved over the course of the story; and just like with the first book by the time things come to a close I was sad that I wasn't going to get more time with her.
I mentioned earlier that Amora is suffering from PTSD, and this is something that comes up multiple times in the narrative, and informs much of her actions and decision making. Heroes of YA adventure stories tend to go through a lot of trauma, and are put into situations that most people could never imagine, but it's often stuff that gets pushed back to the background in favour of storytelling across the franchises they feature in. Instead of brushing it under the rug Adalyn Grace makes it an important part of the narrative, and shows that Amora is a very human protagonist, one who's not just haunted by their trauma but allows it to shape them and inform their actions. Amora coming to terms with her loss and moving forward from that are in a lot of ways more important than the magical artefact that she's searching for, or the fate of the kingdom, and it makes the entire narrative feel more grounded; which is saying something when it's a story about magic and monsters and gods. But that's the importance of addressing that kind of trauma, and I think anyone who's been through trauma themselves will be able to see how well Grace handles it here, and will identify with Amora a lot more.
There's a lot that happens in this book that I really liked, and there are parts of the story that I wasn't expecting that came as a pleasant surprise, but the one thing I think that probably bothered me most about the book was that despite how long it was it felt a little too short. There was so much time given over in the first half of the book where Amora was travelling through her kingdom and learning about what's going on that by the time the character really focused on getting the artefact she needed things felt a little rushed. Events unfolded at a pretty fast pace in the final section of the book, and whilst still being great I'd have loved it if we'd have been given another hundred pages or so, just so things could have been given more time. But that's just my personal view, and there's nothing really wrong with the book and I still loved it. Well, other than something that happens towards the end that almost made me cry, but I can't really go into that (spoilers!).
I know that this is the final part of this story, that this was billed as a duology when the first book came out, but if ever Adalyn Grace wants to return to this world in the future I'd be more than happy to see what happens next. Whether it's following Amora, one of her crew, new characters all together, or even going back in time and exploring some of the history of Visidia, I think Adalyn Grace has managed to craft a world that fans are going to want to come back to, a world that will keep drawing them in. Hopefully we'll get some more some day, but for now, this is the perfect ending to this story.
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