The Flame and The Moth: Volume 2 (Etherea) Paperback – 12 Jan. 2015

The cover didn't draw me in at all. I loved the rich chocolate colour but the design, picture and silhouette of the person was nondescript to me. All it made me think of was the genre history, and The Flame and the Moth is as far from history as you could get.The title was intriguing: it told me of something dangerous (the flame) and something vulnerable (the moth) and of course it's book 2 of a book that I've already read: The Curse of Fin Milton. The theme is magic, sorcery, ghosts, adventure and a family feud. It isn't a light read and it's in multi viewpoint, which does make it difficult to stay with the main character.The look inside got straight into the story with Fin Milton astral planing (a sort of out-of-body travel. Beats rush hour, that's for sure!) through New York. The first line made me think of impending doom for this strong character: It wasn't the first time Finn Milton had astral planed through New York city, but it would prove to be his last.Finn has many magical abilities: astral planing, reading minds and heightened hearing. He lives alongside others with his abilities in modern England in the seaside town of Cornwall. An excellent location because Cornwall is steeped with folklore legends.Finn's now with his sweetheart, Ellie, and she's heavily pregnant. Together they travel back to Cornwall because Finn's father had been involved in an incident, which has put him in a coma in hospital. Finn was shocked to hear this news, so I couldn't understand why it took him several more days to visit his dad, albeit he sent someone else (Branna) before he'd even left New York, but still, once back in England Finn slept, ate and chatted about NY before seeing his dad. And again, when his beloved wife went into labour, he spent more time with new friends instead of rushing to her side. These characterizations make Finn a little cold, and I don't think that was the author's intention. Also, there was a lot of talk about Finn being powerful, but he didn't come across like that to me. He was a likeable character, but he relied on too many people to be 'powerful'.Branna was a character that was powerful, however. She didn't seem to need anyone, and she is one character who stayed with me since book 1. She was the reason for the family feud to begin in the first place by killing her evil father and brother in book 1, but they were the bad guys so they had to go.Other than my nitpicks, this is an interesting story of a family at war with one another, and I was so batting for the Milton's!The Connelly's (the baddies) are an evil bunch and don't care who they hurt to get to Finn Milton. The book seemed to come alive the more madder and crazier Cillian became. He was one scary person!The book was addictive, and I couldn't once predict the ending. It had lovely friendships between the characters and The Flame and The Moth truly was bad verses evil.A few typos, mainly the speech mark being inside punctuation, but nothing spectacular. The men in the story, with an exception to Cillian, appeared a little effeminate but otherwise great characterisation.The mixed POV took away some of the story's power and needed to be contained, or even eradicated completely, to make this an excellent book.Overall, an interesting story which would probably appeal to the YA genre.

A strong sequel that explores the history of the families from the first novel (Curse of Fin Milton). On top of this there are new conflicts between the gifted characters and have some quite intense sequences.If you said the first book was about Romeo and Juliet, this sequel is about the Capulets and the Montagues.