Riders of Fire and Ice is the second book of The Talisman Series by Brett Salter. At the end of the first book, it is mentioned that Rome and Julian will spend a semester in England and that Julian’s sister studies there. In the second book, Rome and Julian travel there to explore more about their world of Dragons and Knights. They find allies, monsters, and some answers to their multitudes of questions. It’s a complete package and more with sibling rivalry, a little romance, tons of action, and unexpected twists in the story.
With regards to plot, Rome and Julian had mentioned in the previous book of the series that they weren’t sure they could handle battling more than one monster by just the two of them alone. The battles were more challenging in this book, and monsters were stronger. The story was great and kept my keen attention on every page.
The new characters are well developed and well, after Search for Synergy (the first book of the series), I expected nothing less from Brett. However, I did miss Mr.Jones (I wished he had more dialogues) and Mr.Rider. Fortunately, Camela Rider more than made up for the lack of Mr.Rider’s dialogues, and she added sass too.
With the increasing complexity of battles that have dragon(s), monster(s), and human/knight (s), it is challenging to design a battle sequence that the young readers can understand well. I was impressed with the attention to detail in the writing, and there was more than enough provided about the characters and the battles to help the readers imagine it.
In comparison to the previous book, the positives stayed the same. The book was longer this time, which was very appreciated.
I had only two issues. I did not like how Julian acted when he reached his limits of anger toward his sister. Moreover, there were a few typos, and the book would’ve benefited from an extra round of editing.
All in all, Riders of Fire and Ice was fun to read. It’s hard to put the book down after you start reading it, and it was better than the preceding one. I can’t wait to see what the rest of the series has to offer.
The Rising Tilde 