Tempest Unleashed (Tempest Series #2) by Tracy Deebs

Tempest Unleashed - Tracy Deebs
Tempest is not setting in well as the merfolk’s saviour. She misses her home, she misses her family and, most guilt causing of all, she misses Matt, her human ex-boyfriend. Something she hopes to keep from Kona, her Selkie current boyfriend – and a prince no less.
 
To make matters worse, she and Hailaine, merQueen, keep butting heads and can’t seem to agree with anything, least of all the many many things that Hailaine thinks she needs to learn.
 
But Tiamat is still out there and still plotting to take down both Kingdoms and dominate the Pacific – and Tempest doesn’t feel even close to ready to face her.
 
 
 
 
I protest most strongly to the name of this book.
 
Tempest Unleashed is a terrible description of the events recounted within. I propose a better title:Tempest Mopes. Or maybe Tempest Monologues. Or Tempest Naval Gazes.
 
For much of this book not much happens and there isn’t much pretence of a plot. We open with Tempest worrying about her human family (somewhat reasonable) who she had to abandon. Which quickly turns into worrying about Matt, which turns into worrying about Kona because blah blah love triangle, blah. She doesn’t get on with the merQueen because REASONS (more on this later) and this causes more musings. Then musings about whether she and Kona can ever be together.
 
New character Sabyn shows up to train her, he flirts with Tempest, he and Kona don’t get on, Tempest spends pages talking about this. There’s lots and lots of conflict with Kona over boyfriend issues.
 
Tiamat is in the background doing bad evil stuff which everyone talks about… but doesn’t do anything about.

An event eventually drives Tempest back to land where she… sits around and has lots of angsty arguments and discussions. I don’t think there’s much else she could have done in the situation, but it adds on to the general inaction that permeates this book to be incredibly frustrating. It would have probably helped a lot to see Tempest more deeply involved in training, seeing what she learned etc. Or maybe her spending more time with the merQueen, learning what’s happening in the realm, how they’re resisting Tiamat, training, making plans etc – at least then there would have been some actual concrete action taken by Tempest in the face of the overwhelming threat
 
Instead we had pages and pages of discussion, arguments and moping, discussion argument moping over and over again – I reached over half way and realised that absolutely nothing had actually happened in the book.
 
Finally the action hits, Tempest swims off, pulls a super power out of her arse and TA-DA day is saved. Does that count as a spoiler? Because, really, it’s pretty weak.
 

 

Back to the merQueen, there’s a huge rift between Tempest and Hailaine in this book and, beyond “Hailaine is an evil meanie” it’s not really explained. I think it’s supposed to represent how hard Hailaine has become from the difficult decisions she’s had to make as a queen – but she doesn’t actually make any decisions. In fact, the only indication she’s ever had to make bad decisions is a memory of Tempest’s mothers – so it can hardly be disagreement over the decisions Hailaine is making. It all seems even more bizarre since Hailaine is apparently grooming Tempest to replace her – so why the rift? Why the treatment designed to drive her away? I can see many ways there could be a rift – so show them! Rather than just have Hailaine be randomly unpleasant for reasons unknown, actually develop it. As it stands, the conflict seems to be there just so Tempest won’t trust her since that’s vital for the plot to work.
 
Source: http://www.fangsforthefantasy.com/2014/01/tempest-unleashed-tempest-series-2-by.html