Dance of the Gods, pt. 2

by Nora Roberts
pgs. 125-316 (End)
Book 2 of the Circle Trilogy

Still a lot of talk...Yadda, yadda, yadda. Blah, blah, blah. I don't have a problem with dialogue at all. What I do have a problem with is with dialogue that is repeated over and over again for - I don't know - space? How many conversations must the members of the circle have about how they need to stick together and tell each other everything? It was a concept I grasped quite well in the first book; why do the characters need to be reminded of it every other page? Why do I have to read about it every other page?

And Blair's repetitive inner dialogues grew, well, monotonous. I appreciate getting a glimpse into a character's head. It's one of the things that makes Roberts' characters come alive and something at which she usually excels. I can't figure out exactly what happened here. It could be that, because Roberts had to spread the action out over three books, there was less action in each and more dialogue than was needed or wanted. Yet, that argument becomes difficult to make when one considers that this isn't Roberts' first trilogy. She's done several, most of which are much more compelling reads than the Circle Trilogy thus far.

It's interesting too that, despite all the dialogue - inner and otherwise - I didn't understand the characters all that well at the end of the day. As characters in a book, I liked Blair and Larkin perfectly well. As people I could imagine actually existing, they fell fairly flat. And, I said it before, Blair is simply too much of an Eve Dallas rip-off for me to really appreciate her as a separate character. There were some differences, i.e. Blair doesn't mind doing typical girly things; Eve doesn't even have an idea what that is. But those differences weren't substantial enough to make me feel as if wasn't reading the story of a poor and uninteresting descendent of Eve.

Despite all of that, I do look forward to reading Valley of Silence. I can't wait to read Cian and Moira's story. It is my sincere hope that it turns out to be worth mostly uninteresting reading I've had to put up with so far.