Sundered

The Return of the Elves, Book 2

By: Bethany Adams, Claire Bloom - director

Narrated by: Gabrielle de Cuir, Stefan Rudnicki

A life in shambles

Lyr might be a powerful elven lord in charge of thousands, but his personal life is a disaster. Just the month before, a daughter he'd never known existed arrived from Earth, giving him news of his lost love's death. Since then he has been betrayed, captured, and almost murdered. And though his enemy was defeated, Lyr's wounds never seem to heal. He certainly doesn't need more conflict.

A perilous journey

Amid the glittering perfection of Alfheim, Meli is a dismal failure. Haunted by visions of people and places she's never seen, she struggles to find her place. So when her king orders her to lead an expedition to another world, Meli is caught between shock and terror. How can she navigate the veil between worlds with no magic of her own? But with Alfheim threatened by strange, dark energy, she has no choice.

A threat that spans worlds

The last thing Lyr expects is the arrival of the Ljósálfar, the reclusive Norse elves of Alfheim. More surprising? One among them, Meli, is a possible soulbounded, a link he'd believed lost with his previous love. But wounded and besieged with problems on every side, he can't let himself be distracted. Poisoned energy is flooding into the closely connected realms of the fae, causing sickness, and Lyr must rush to find the source of the threat.

Only Moranaia remains untouched - leading Lyr to suspect one of his own people might be to blame.

©2016 Bethany Adams (P)2017 Skyboat Media, Inc.

Lyr & Meli

Lyr is the Elf Lord in charge of protecting the veil between earth and his world and the sacred tree.

His personal life is still trying to find it's footing after discovering he had a daughter the month before and surviving a murder plot against him.

Meli is not held in high regard but more as a failure as a mage in her world. Her true talent lies in "finding things" - All her life she's had visions of people and places she's never visited. No one is more surprised than Meli when her king orders her to travel on an expedition to Lyr's world. Meli is insecure and has never traveled or wanted to, especially through the veil where individuals have known to go missing for years -

When Meli and her team arrived uninvited on Moranaia, they discover there is a soul bounding pull for both of them. This is impossible since his soul bounded died on earth - no one has ever recorded a 2nd soul bound before.... Then there is the "ambassador" travelling with Meli (you love to hate her) - While poisonous energy is seeping into the fae realms causing sickness, Lyr needs to isolate the threat protect the children of all the realms, while investigating and stopping the seeping.

I really enjoyed this story, more than the first book - it had more substance in the story line - perhaps it's me, but sometimes I got easily confused when all the elves gave their LONG rank/status before there name and I got lost in who was what character -

who is who?

one or two names for each character should be enough for anyone! there seems to be an endless number for these characters. I have really hard time with names and so I have to guess who is who.
the story is captivating just the same.

The Culture and the realms

I saw a bunch of reviews about names confusing people and it had me nervous at first because the first book was easy enough for me to follow. I was happy when it was just as easy for me to follow in this book as well. Though I could imagine the VA practice to get it right in one try I loved that the culture had them include the titles,ranks,houses,ect. in the name.

In this book we get to find out a bit more about the other realms and how the function. I wasn't expecting Alfheim to be a big part of this but was pretty happy with how it was portrayed and how the characters were.

Speaking of culture and other realms it was great getting to see how they interact and the differences in the culture and how the main characters had to overcome that barrier.

Characters hard to follow but good story line.

Good story but hard to keep the characters straight due to the long names. I enjoyed the various plot twists and surprises.

Names

The only problems I had sued the similarity of the names. I also did not feel that the voices changing back and forth was as smooth as the first of the novels.

Loved it

I enjoyed listening to this 2nd part of the series. A lot of nice details and elvish stuff. :)

love this series

I have really enjoyed this series . the narrators are great, smooth and clear. well written.

Good story.

I enjoy the first book and this one for the story. The female narrator should have read the entire books. The male narrator drones and puts me to sleep. His voice is very deep and lacks range for voicing female characters.
Really, not sure why two narrators were chosen.

Great book!

I love this series cause it has a great connection with the characters and lots of action and thought about the worlds therein. Great development of the stories and I love the voices who read these books!!! Makes my drive to work thrilling.

Slow but steady

Was hard to get into this book initially as it jumped from character to character but the more you learned about each character the easier it was to follow along with the story. By the last book I was totally in love with all the characters and could see how each one had a part to play in the final outcome