Review: Soulsmith (Cradle #2) by Will Wight

MY ⭐️ RATING: 4/5

FORMAT: Kindle Whispersync

BOOK DESCRIPTION

Outside Sacred Valley, ancient ruins rise from the earth, drawing sacred artists from miles around to fight for the treasures within.
Lindon has reached Copper, taking the first step on the road to power, but the warriors of the outside world are still far beyond him.
To advance, he turns to the arcane skills of the Soulsmiths, who craft weapons from the stuff of souls. With new powers come new enemies, and Lindon soon finds himself facing an entire sect of Golds.

MY REVIEW

Soulsmith continues immediately after the events of Unsouled with Lindon and Yerrin leaving Sacred Valley together. It’s fast paced, with great action and Travis Baldree’s narration continues to be a huge bright spot in this series. He does a great job with all the voices and emotions of the characters.

“When you’re alone, first look for a weapon.”

I love that Will Wight expanded even deeper into the ranking system and also the magic system giving us some really cool scenes of madra use that we didn’t get to see in Unsouled. The world building is taken up another notch with the new places we get to visit, and as we visit new places, we get to be introduced to new and exciting complex characters along the way, among those are Fisher Gesha, Jai Long and Eithan.

“It’s his favorite training technique:
leaving her alone, where no one can save her, and forcing her to rely on her own knowledge to escape. It teaches her reliance, he says. A Path is only one person wide.”

The reason for the 4 stars is because I felt Lindon was a bit boring for most of the book and it just felt like it dragged. It wasn’t until later on that it started to get better, and that had a lot to do with the introduction of Eithan, who is a tremendous character with a funny personality that I’m going to enjoy getting to know. Lindon’s character does get better as the story progresses, but it was a bit of a struggle to get through at the beginning.