Prophecy (Elizabeth Haydon)

Prophecy
(The Symphony of Ages series: Rhapsody trilogy, Book 2)
Elizabeth Haydon
Tor
Fiction, Fantasy
*** (Okay)

DESCRIPTION: The half-Lirin woman Rhapsody and her companions, the brutish giant Grunthor and the former assassin Achmed, are refugees from a land and a time swallowed by centuries. Unfortunately, an ancient evil, the one that destroyed their homeland of Serendair centuries ago, has also come halfway around the world to continue its quest for complete chaos and destruction. As Achmed and Grunthor continue building their Bolg kingdom in the abandoned subterranean city of the late King Gwylliam (once a shining beacon of hope for the displaced - and immortal - first generation Serendair refuguees, but now a curse after his actions destroyed the very land he once united), Rhapsody sets out into the world of Men to follow her own path. Her often-prophetic nightmares warn her that the evil demon plots against a religious leader, but her efforts to save the man are complicated. The demon acts most often through a host, who can be entirely unaware of the dark influence compelling their actions... and thus impossible to track until it is too late. She also keeps crossing paths with the handsome, mysterious man known as Ashe, whose tormented past is as shrouded as his motivations. In a land full of secrets and lies, Ashe could be a powerful ally - or an enemy as terrible as the demon itself.
As Rhapsody pursues the demon's agents and works to thwart its plans, King Achmed and Grunthor discover a long-lost secret beneath the mountains that not even the great architect Gwylliam found... and, with it, more clues to the prophecies that might save the world - or see it consumed in demonic fire.

REVIEW: I have a few books running around that managed to lose themselves after I started reading them; recent reorganization efforts unearthed them, and I've been slowly picking my way through them. This book is one of them, so perhaps my rating should be taken with a slight grain of salt. What I loved about the first book in this series (Rhapsody) was the wonderfully realized world - not just a continent, not just a short span of years, but an entire globe, peopled with disparate cultures and races that merge and break through the centuries - Haydon created. Here, she continues the process, but I found my interest waning as my eyes glazed, with large chunks of information interrupting the flow of the story. Her characters, intriguing in the first volume, start to feel strained as she develops them further. Actually, it was the heroine Rhapsody and her significant friend Ashe who nearly whined me out of finishing the book, going to elaborate, nearly comical lengths to bemoan and bewail their Tragic Pasts and Deep Dark Secrets. Once their relationship kindles (as expected), they bemoan and bewail even in their happiness.
The story, when it moves, does at least move quickly, and when Rhapsody and her friends actually do learn something (instead of dancing around it or taking history lesson breaks), they tend to act on it in a reasonably intelligent manner. Those moments seemed to be a bit thin, given the overall length of the book... and Haydon still has (at least) one more to go to wrap things up. By this point, though, I'm starting to wonder how much of the third book will be world-building and character-whining padding as opposed to actual story. Still some nice ideas in there, and still an impressive world, but I just had to push myself too hard to keep reading to merit a Good rating. I'm not sure I have the reading stamina to wade through much more. (The third volume in the trilogy, Destiny, is sitting in my reading backlog as I type, but I don't expect I'll be getting to it soon.)