Review – Prism Cloud by Jeff Wheeler

What is it about Jeff Wheeler’s Harbinger series that keeps me coming back? If you read my other reviews, you’ll notice I’m a big fan of doom and gloom, dystopian and moral reprobates in my reading. These themes aren’t on ready display in this author’s work. Yet, after being “duped” by Netgalley into reading the first in the series, I keep coming back for more.

This time around, Sera has been packed off to Kingsfountain, along with Brant Fitzroy, as a peace envoy, with the view to marrying her off to Prince Trevon to put an end to hostilities that were not going in favour of Muirwood. Cettie’s life has been going well since the incident with Rand Patchett, although her fiance Adam Creigh has also been sent to Kingsfountain to help fight the Cholera Morbus outbreak. All so very run-of-the-mill teen novel fare.

However, this is where the author separates himself from the masses. He creates conflict that, while maintaining his “clean fantasy” motif, pushes the story forward, often at a breakneck pace. For the last couple of books, after a hundred pages or so I’ve thought “this is my last Harbinger book.” Then stuff goes down and I’m hooked and waiting for the next one. Prism Cloud is no different and, I would argue, the darkest book in the series, the Empire Strikes Back to the earlier books’ Star Wars. For example, Sera does get married to Trevon, but there’s a coup and they get separated, and she somehow making her way back to Muirwood. Unbeknownst to her, her father dies and declares her emperor in his stead. As for Cettie, the mystery over who her mother was appears to be resolved, but doesn’t necessarily make her happy. In fact, she ends up in Kingsfountain at the last place she would ever have imagined.

So, the story blasts forward, raising the stakes higher than ever before for what I would imagine will be the last book in the Harbinger series. This is certainly not the darkest series you will ever read, and those who prefer more adult fare may wish to steer clear, but as the darkest book in the series so far, this is definitely my favourite.

4.5/5 stars.