This book was even more bizarre than the first one and left me saying, 'What the heck?' many times. Most of those inner thoughts were in puzzled delight, but some were just completely lost. Some events or details that were explained further or revealed had lost their meaning because I had no idea what it was talking about because these books pack an incredible amount of information in their pages. However, the characters are still incredibly likeable (minus the obnoxious children, Petra, Ardi, and the other one), and Yun. I have no idea what happened to Yun in this book. She was great in the first one. She felt inconsistent, hollow, and one-dimensional in this one, especially where King Scribbs is concerned. I started to hate her a bit, like Edmund in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, which made me sad because I really wanted to like her. This was a solid second book in the series and I truly cannot wait to read the rest.