Wit'ch Storm

Wit'ch Storm (The Banned and the Banished #2), by James ClemensElena bears the mark of the wit'ch upon her palm, the crimson stain that testifies to the awesome power of unimaginable potency: wild seductive, and difficult to control. Only a mistress of blood magick can stand against the foul minions and all-corrupting evil of the Dark Lord. But Elena is not yet the mistress of her magick. Protected by an ageless warrior and a band of renegades, she quests for a lost city where prophecies speak o [...]

The creepy, horror characters and scenes are not really my thing, but the story (and the series) is an interesting mix of familiar fantasy stereotypes and creative, original elements.

L'histoire se densifie encore plus dans ce tome 2, et si au début je tiquais un peu face au déchaînement de surnaturel et bestioles rebutantes, tout le reste du livre m'a beaucoup plu. On rencontre de nouveaux personnages passionnants, même si je trouve que les personnalités ne sont pas assez développées, assez fouillées. L'univers est très riche et on ne peut que se laisser happer, quelle imagination !!

Neue Gefährten, zwei neue Völker und ihre Geschichten, neue Feinde. Auch der zweite Teil hat mich beim nochmals lesen gefesselt. Hier bekommt man außerdem, im Gegensatz zum ersten Teil, viel mehr Einblicke in die Geschichten und Welten der Bösewächter und dunklen Magiker. Ich habe meinen Schlaf für dieses Buch geopfert.

If the first book wasn't full of enough magic and mayhem for you, this one follows up in such a way that you can't help but bite your nails as you read about Elena's dire quest to reach Aloa Glen. This one has enough villains and creepy creatures in it, including a lovely Spider-Birthing woman named Virani who, honestly, gave me a nightmare or two. But as with all the other characters in this intricate and immense world, she has a back story that makes you feel sorry for her.All in all, Clemens [...]

I can't rate this one. I only got to about 10 pages and realized the writing style was not for me. I didn't know that this author is also James Rollins. The other book I read by James Rollins I gave 2 stars. I think his style is just not for me. I bought this book because of the cool witch on the cover. I guess I judged this one wrong,.

Een heel mooi vervolg op Het boek van vuur. Elena is al wat gegroeid als mens en ook als heks. Ze moet verder, ook om haar broer te redden. Spannende fantasy, en genre die ik door Clemens leerde kennen en waarvan ik zeker meer ga lezen.

reread 2016

I'm giving this one a solid 4 stars for the improvement to the writing. It's not nearly as try-hard or repetitive this time around, and if I'm remembering correctly it just gets better from here. I don't really have too much to say about this one that I haven't already said in my review for the first book. I think I do prefer this book slightly because it introduces my favorite set of characters; Sy-Wen, Kast, and Rag'nark. Also, I just love the concept of underwater dwelling dragons. So cool! I [...]

In this second book of The Banned and Banished series, the saga of Elena the Wit'ch continues. Now, she is travelling across the lands to reach the old magical city of A'loa Glen to seek out the Blood Diary and end the reign of the Dark Lord. The Dark Lord, however, wants the wit'ch for his own evil deeds and has set up traps throughout the land to capture her, using his Ill'guard. With the help of her gang of misplaced heroes, she must evade the traps and survive long enough to reach A'loa Glen [...]

There's two main approaches to telling you how evil is the evil wizard is in a story containing an evil wizard.One of them goes "The evil wizard used magics most foul to force the pitiable woman to birth a demon", and the other one will describe the birth and how it smelt when her water burst. I will not provide that description here.This book is squarely in the second category, with gratuitous gore, and entire passages included which have no bearing on the story except for shock value.The world [...]

I really liked this book. Just enough characters to fully develop yet not get lost in their importance (as in, every one played a significant role), histories revealed, more mysteries presented, and teasers for what's next to come. As an aside, I don't mind the apostrophe's. How else can you know how to pronounce a name? RA Salvadore used them in Menzoberranzen.

Nouveaux personnages, nouvelles routes et nouveaux pouvoirs. La quête de la sor'cière se complexifie alors que les bannis et les proscrits prennent des décisions qui changent leur vie à jamais.Les descriptions des paysages nous emmènent à travers les âges et les contrées d'Alasea, du sommet des pics enneigées, aux fosses peuplées par les monstres des légendes.

Un très bon deuxième tome. Cependant, je l'ai trouvé un peu plus confus que le premier, et certains de mes personnages préférés étaient très peu présents. J'ai hâte de lire le troisième tome, qui promet d'être absolument épique!

AwesomeJames Clemons has caught the essence of really really good fantasy. He is as good writer of fantasy as he with his international thrillers. His writing moves his characters constantly. I'm never bored when I read anything he written.

Much better than book 1. Vivid imagery, characters with more substance rather than caricature (except for Er'ril,) and I'll be reading book 3.

2nd book in the series - Great read. Really want to get next in series and continue!

This book never really hooked me. I was interested in what was going on, and I really liked Elena a a character. But somehow, something just never clicke to make me really enjoy this book as some other people obviously have. A weirdly frustrating Three Stars. Plot: Three Stars It certainly had it's moments. There was action, itrigue and pace. Indeed I'm sure that, if it wasn't for some really dull parts that I just couldn't care less about, this book could have made it four stars. As it was, the [...]

WIT’CH STORM continues the tale of Elena and her band of heroes as they travel across a continent to a lost city from which they must retrieve a magical item that is needed to end the reign of an evil Dark Lord. If that sounds generic, the storyline largely is. A young heroine discovers latent magical abilities, is told that she is the prophesied savior of the realm, and begins a quest against impossible odds. Along the way she is joined by a motley group of companions, gradually learns to har [...]

James Clemens, I have found, is a better writer than James Rollins. Why does that matter when this book is by Clemens? Because both are pen names of Jim Czajkowski. I mentioned in another review, the one for a Rollins latest book that I liked Rollins non-series books better than his Sigma series. The first five Rollins books were non-series, last five were Sigma books (at the time of writing this review, 2008). I took that to mean that Rollins felt freer and less restrained when he wrote a non-s [...]

Après ma lecture du premier tome, je vous avoue que je ne me suis plus tellement intéressé à cette saga. Je n'avais pas tellement apprécié Elena, le premier tome se déroulait sur deux jours et demi pour plus de 600 pages, et ça me faisait l'effet d'un gros prologue. Mais il y avait quand même un petit quelque chose qui m'incitait à revenir vers la Sor'cière, puisque j'ai profité de l'#OP1000K pour obtenir ce deuxième tome en ebook, une sorte de crash test pour savoir si on continue [...]

First off, this book was generally written better than the first IMO. Too many excessive details, or lack of details, hooked me and pulled me right out of the story in Wit'ch Fire; that didn't happen as often in Wit'ch Storm, which was nice to see. At times the writing seems like it's aiming for far higher than it can reach, but the definite improvement helped smooth that out.Despite that though, the first third of the book seems almost under-developed in comparison to the rest of it, as if the [...]

I'm placing my review for the entire series on this page, because it was the book which originally drew me to buy the entirety of the five volumes. Why? Brom's artwork. The portrait of the dark witch Virani on featured on the cover of Wit'ch Storm, was so striking that I went ahead and bought the whole series. Little did I realise that Brom had only done covers for two of the books, and after that, Alan Pollack took over for Wit'ch War, and the covers got worse and worse from there. It's complet [...]

I first read this series many years ago when I first got into digital reading and was the proud possessor of a Palm VIIx with, if I recall correctly a 256mb Compact Flash card in it that I stored apps and books on. Damn those were the days! In any case to show you just how compelling these books were, I read all five of the quite lengthy tomes on the minuscule screen of that Palm Pilot device. They were in the Palm .PDB format and were acquired from the then fledgling, now departed (it has since [...]

This book was a great second installment to the Banned and Banished series, and I fully intend on reading the last three, but they are pretty long, and at times a little dry. I find myself putting them down and going on to something else. But seriously, do we need a full page describing how they loaded horses on to a boat?***SLIGHT SPOILER ALERT, NO PLOT RUINS***I think that's my main issue with the book, he tends to over describe. It could cut down the story a lot if he didn't describe as much [...]

This is a book for lovers of fantasy and lovers of small talk. To me it's a book that's similar to when you meet someone who is kind of reserved but intrigues you and has so much promise that you figure if you just meet them in the right circumstances, they are likely amazing. But then you meet them in their favorite setting and see that they spend so much time trying to please someone who is much less interesting and cliche that everything interesting about them gets buried. The story is like a [...]

(This review may contain spoilers).This book returns to the land of Alasea, revisiting old characters and introducing new ones. (Or reintroducing, in my case). There were characters I felt sorry for, even knowing what they'd become. Vira'ni springs to mind.The ill'guard was an interesting concept. Powers and personalities twisted into something evil and corrupted it was a very scary idea.As in the first book, my favourite character remains Tol'chuk, though Fardale is a very close second. I also [...]

Mede door het heerlijke weer van afgelopen week, dit boek in een aardig hoog tempo uitgelezen. Het verhaal gaat verder waar het in het eerste boek is gebleven. Hetzelfde geldt eigenlijk voor de plus- en minpunten uit dat boek. Ten eerste loopt het verhaal weer heerlijk soepel, met vele afwisselingen van de hoofdpersonen. Dat houdt de spanning erin, die overigens in het hele boek aanwezig is.Maar waar ik bij het eerste boek al over klaagde, is hier ook weer het geval. Namelijk de vele doden onder [...]

MY TAKE:The second story in the series, I really enjoy this story line. It is the epic continuation of the quest to unit Elena with the Blood Diary for the salvation of the land. I didn’t like the splitting up of the party, but do like the complex weaving of the separate story lines that build to the climax of the book. It’s interesting to see the patterns, and how each action is important or influential to the success of their goal. This is filled with action and adventure, with moments of [...]

An improvement on the first book in the series. Again Clemens has the main character act with wisdom beyond her years, but it's less grating this time around, possibly simply because I grew to accept it after the first book. This story takes place a few months after the events of book 1, and Elena and her companions begin their journey to stop the Dark Lord. One refreshing aspect of the book is that this Dark Lord isn't just sitting in his mountain lair waiting to be attacked by the hero, but is [...]