I have to admit to a lot of eye-rolling with this installment. It feels shorter and a whole lot less descriptive for some reason (even though the page count is the same and there's less actionable moments per plot). I really enjoyed the humans in the first two, and felt like I could track their attitudes throughout the stories--but this Alana doesn't feel like a solid identity...so that character shift was a little frustrating.
If you read my review on the first book, ya' know how I feel about that artwork interspersed in the text: we're better off without it.
Let me explain how and why (skip to the next paragraph if you haven't read this book yet and you thusfar plan on it), in this book, I'll use the creepy evil 'Shadow' guy as my example. The author will introduce the character in-text, by description first, then she shares the image of whatever character at the chapter end. So. In text, as a reader I'm immersed in the movie behind my eyelids, I image this guy looking like a creepier yellow venom, with his weird tri tentacle appendage...and low and behold I get to the image and it's nothing close to the unique vision my brain spat out at her explanation, even if the image shown wasn't missing it's weird appendage (which I'm still confused if it was actually its peen or not). This ALWAYS pulls you from a text. It's jarring. Even if the image at the end is cooler than you imagined, you get displaced from the text as you reformat the previous action to replay the character with that new design.
When you read a picture book, the image's action is written on the page that corresponds with it--so that your brain is keeping a tally as you go, there's a reason for that. As a trained illustrator, trust me, that's the reason we do that.
But back to the point at hand, once again, the cover work is exceptional. The theme and dimension of the series is maintained and I love that, the caricature aspect of it is both choice and golden. Showing how strange and dynamic the characters are right off the get go is awesome, and I love the author's care in crafting their differences from one another.
I also want to point out that she's copy-pasting her bio at this point, all three of the Darverius about the Author pages say "this is my tenth novel..." So yeah, the typo team needs to be a wee bit better with her stuff. That is unfortunately also reflected in the text: so many typos. I get a little itchy is all.
BUT.
Pretty good series maintainer. I'm totally ready for book four, because I have a hopeful feeling that its plot is going to pull the series up into the strato!