The Mantis Equilibrium - Book Two 2. The Mantis Gland

Readers should read Book One first for more understanding of characters and events.

This continues our journey into this apocalyptic world where a small, jewel like gland gives those gifted with it or those who kill the gifted powers beyond comprehension. It's a violent and lawless world where the different groups mostly hate and distrust each other.

Still, even in the darkest places families can thrive and family can be more than blood relations. Dozi and the family group she continues to grow from outcasts is as tightly knit and loving as any family unit.

Join in the journey as we travel to an uncertain future. It's filled with surprises, joy, and sadness. You'll remember these unique characters for a long time.

I am going to start by stating that I believe the writing and pacing in this book is good, as good or better than the first one.  I am not always a fan of short chapters, but in some way this style has worked well with this story.  We get these little tidbits and are able to digest them and see how we feel about what is happening.  

This book keeps a number of the characters from the first, but does add a couple of new ones and increases the amount of time we get to spend with others.  One new character is truly a delight to me and that was for me, the best part of this book.

Okay, now to my issue with this story.  The seemingly endless amount of violence and hate the seems to be generated by all sides in this story was almost more than I could handle.  I understand that the way the story is progressing, this was an almost inevitable direction the story was going to go in.  And I do feel that the author is using the violence to send the story forward.  I can't even say that the violence is particularly gratuitous but it bothered me more than I would have suspected.  

If you read and enjoyed the first book; do read this and try to stay with it.  Most probably would not have as much of an issue as I did with the violence; as I stated, it isn't gratuitous or graphic but the underlying hate just made it almost worse for me.

Will truly be interested to see were this story goes in the next book.