 Hello, hello, hello, folks. I'm Philip Magnus and today I'll be talking about The Girl in the Mountain, the second of Mark Lawrence's Book of the Ice trilogy. I am a big, big fan of this one. I'll be honest with you, from the get-go. I have really enjoyed the others' adventures. First in last years The Girl in the Stars, which told the story about a young girl from a tribe of ice wanderers trapped beneath the ice. It was thrilling and incredibly easy to read and the trills and the ease with which the prose flows very, very enjoyable. I have to be honest about that. I'm going to read the rest of my review because honestly I hate talking into a camera without a teleprompter and teleprompters for whatever reason. Very expensive despite being practically just a bit of glass. Maybe I should make one. Anyway, let's get into it, shall we? The Girl in the Mountain. It's really somehow slipped past me. I was aware of it in the back of my head and I even followed some of the reviews. I read through them as fellow reviewers were singing the praises of Lawrence once more, something I have done myself on a number of occasions over this past year, both with the first book and with the Impossible Times trilogy. But I was in the middle of writing my thesis and so I had to make Yaa's wait a little while. Then, first thing, after I submitted my thesis, I went to my local bookstore and purchased the Living Hell out of this wonderful copy. I think this is maybe the US edition or the US cover at the very least and I like it much better than this one. So this one is not bad by any means. I just find the colors and everything this cover is doing to really be hitting a very, very sweet spot with me. Now, like it's predecessors, the Girl in the Mountain flows like silk between your fingers. The flow of its first bar drawing you deeper and deeper into the eponymous mountain. Our girl Yaa's has to metaphorically climb and conquer and also probably, probably, not just metaphorically, literally. There's some climbing, some conquering and boats are done really, really well. This first half is different from the girl and the stars in one big way and I think maybe it's different from all the rest of Mark Lawrence's books as well because while most of them have the titular or the main character of the series as the only point-of-view character, the girl in the mountain has multiple points of view. We are given a peep into the minds of two of the other main characters, the waterbending Turin and the Icto Warrior and Star Quarterback or at least Star Quarterback adjacent, well. The mysteries within the mountain make for excellent fun. Manipulation, misdirection and sense of danger dominate pervade the first 180 pages of the novel or so. Keeping true to the tone of the previous novel and its cliffhanger ending, in fact this novel picks up immediately after the last one ends, which I could appreciate in many, many ways. Then comes the second part, which sees a long-waited journey begin, during which the pacing changes considerably. Some have made issue of this, called the novel Uneven because of the way it switches gears, but I would argue that it is a feature, not a bug. The slower, more deliberate pacing of a journey that is at first monotonous is actually a welcome reprieve compared to the action and just the heaviness of those first 180 pages. It is a necessary change, it establishes tone, allows for the reader to connect to the characters plight in this very different environment they're now faced with. The character work is once more nothing short of phenomenal. It is the strongest point in a very strong series, or what is so far a very strong series. Here's to hoping that Lauren sticks the landing, which I hear is one of his strong suits, and from the Impossible Times trilogy which I finished at the beginning of this year, it really is. The bond between Yas and her friends is now strengthened to the point of being unbreakable. All those doubts that were present in the girl in the stars, they're gone, Yas has proven herself as a leader, and her vision defines the quest that all these, this group of characters, five or so, go on. Maybe that's a bit of a spoiler, but I don't think so. Now the swiftness with which characters are dispatched speaks of a world that is brutal to the characters I hoped would get to survive. They didn't, not all of them, of course. Some did. I don't suppose you would mind if I told you that Yas is still there by the end of this second book. It's not much of a shock because this is Yas's adventure, and it will be very weird to have her killed, but other characters, main characters, I never expected Lawrence would actually kill. They are dispatched with brutality and swiftness, and that left me reeling, reading over the words on the page again. And I know I'm kind of repeating myself after last week's Charles Avert review, in which I said something very similar to this, but it is a good book that has you invest into your characters so deeply as to achieve sense of aching. Aching with loss once they're no longer there. The idea is Lawrence is playing with, as always share equal parts fantasy and science-fictional DNA. Mad artificial intelligences are playing Greek god dress up, writhing on well-known myths, both to the benefit and detriment to our characters. Of the antagonists the most interesting and complex is once more Tiers, who was once Prometheus, the demon-like essence of one of the missing, still lingering in making appearances when you least expect him. If you've wondered what the missing are, this book also has a lot of information on that, a lot of lore allowing you to really build a picture of the events that left the world of Abeth or Abeth. I'm not sure how to pronounce it, whichever you prefer, but since it is this frozen world with just a strip of green land near the equator, it's equator, equator, whatever, whatever. Yes, it tells you a lot about the world, is what I'm trying to say, and a lot about the dangers that threaten this world with a constant layer of ice all over it and the end of all life. After a contentious relationship with Tiers, I can't wait to see how his storyline will resolve. To be fair, I'm a sucker for every one of the characters who are still with Yas by the end of the novel, and with the tight spot there all in, I once again find myself applauding Lawrence and cursing his name for leaving off at a cliffhanger eerily familiar to past readers of his work. I was also surprised to discover a link between the world of Abeth and another Lawrence series I read in Adort, Impossible Times. It's a hell of a stretch in time and space both, and it left me at once flabbergasted and appreciative of this complex mosaic Lawrence is rendering into view. Someone compared it to Brandon Sanderson's Cosmere, and there is certainly a bit of that going on, going around, and I suspect there's even a hoid-like character in the face of Elias Taproot, but we might talk about both of these characters as a later date. Far more tangible is the connection to the Book of the Ancestors trilogy, which I needed very little reason for finally picking up. The Go and the Mountain might just have given me that tiny, tiny shove, so that's how I'll kill a week or two before the next book comes out. It's still untitled, by the way, so what gives a smart Lawrence tell us the title of the third Book of the Ice, please. I would very much like to know it. You won't be surprised at my recommending this one. It's an engrossing sequel Lawrence has written, one that doesn't suffer from that horrifying for some slump that sci-fi and fantasy trilogies are known to every once in a while experience. The world of Abeth is a spell-binding place, and a terrifying one, and I've grown very fond of it after these two novels. I have to wonder how those of you who have read the Book of the Ancestors feel about the ways in which this latest novel builds over and develops an overarching conflict. Was it always hinted at? A plot thread or several left unresolved during the Book of the Ancestors trilogy? I suspect I'll soon find out for myself. Would you be interested in seeing reviews of those other novels by Lawrence? I think I would love to make them, but if you would be particularly interested in hearing about some aspect of them, let me know down in the comments. Of course, you should also let me know if you plan on reading either this one, or its prequel, what, or the first novel in the series, not prequel, that's entirely the wrong thing. You know what I mean. Also, don't forget to like and share and subscribe. You know, those things matter to me for whatever reason, it's not like I'm going to break into YouTube's top one million channels anytime soon, but until, until I do, I suppose there's nothing left to say, except read the books of the eyes. Please, it's good, it's very good. Yeah, this phenomenal, fantastic, excellent, brilliant main character. I love her so much, I feel for her so bad. And I'm going to see you next time. Bye!