The Watchtower by Lee Carroll | Urban Fantasy Fey Story

The Watchtower
(Black Swan Rising #2)
Lee Carroll
Genres: Fantasy, Paranormal, Romance
Age Group: Young Adult
Publication Date: 4th August 2011
Number of Pages: 397
Source: Borrowed from the Library

Add to your TBR shelf:

With her fair share of problems - money (lack of), an elderly father, a struggling business - Garet should be just like any other young, feisty, single New Yorker. If only it was that simple...

It begins with the old silver box that had been soldered shut. All Garet has to do is open it. A favour for the frail owner of the antiques shop. Who wouldn't help?

Only it's then that things start to change. Garet doesn't notice at first, the shifts barely perceptible. But the city in which she grew up is beginning to reveal a long-hidden side - darker, and altogether more dangerous: parallel world of chaos, smoke and blood.

And now it's out of the box...and it has no intention of going back in.

The Watchtower is the second book in the Black Swan Rising series and after reading book 1 (Black Swan Rising) at the end of 2013, I decided to loan book 2 from my local library to investigate if this series was worth continuing. I had enjoyed book 1 but felt like some of the world-building and literature references within it were confusing, I was however interested to see how the relationship between Will and Garet would develop further. Read my review of Black Swan Rising.

The Watchtower was a more enjoyable read than Black Swan Rising, in part due to the London and Paris settings, the more varied Faerie folk that are introduced within this book (Jean Robin, Morgan, Octopus lady) and also the retelling of Will’s journey to vampirism. At times however, I did find young Will incredibly annoying and also Garet’s journey felt lumpy as she was just passed onto Faerie to Faerie with no great events happening in-between.

I did however enjoy the alternating chapters between Will and Garet and the two time periods within The Watchtower. This made the uneventfulness of the book read a little quicker because of the back and forth chapters but when all the characters ended up in the Summer Country the POV got a little confusing to follow as I was finding it hard to keep up with which Will was in which chapter!

The ending to The Watchtower though has posed a predicament for me, I was 100% positive I wasn’t going to carry on with the series whilst reading the book but after the cliff-hanger ending I may just have to read the third book (The Shape Shifter) to find out what happens next!