Waterless Sea (Chanters of Tremaris #2), Vol. 2 Book

Both the books I have read in this trilogy so far have left me confused and thoughtful. I can say it does not have that terrible fault of being just like every fantasy book ever written (except for the three-book format and the one-special-girl-destined-to-save-the-world aspect, but those, I suppose, are forgivable). The series and the writer are ripe with potential, but there are off notes in the attempted melody. I'll try to identify them properly--then maybe I will have some idea of what I think.

First, the good.
-The music-based "chanting" is creative--I thought at first it sounded rather stiff and pretentious, and perhaps once or twice it was, but really it was a good idea, well executed.
-The Palace of Cobwebs, and Hathara, and Spareth (first book), were really quite brilliant pieces of work. Her world-building is imperfect, but it makes up for its inconsistencies with a few glimmering gems of great, imaginative creation.
-Darrow and Calwyn do not make me want to kill anyone. They're not destined lovers, each captive of the other's inhuman beauty or what have you. In fact, Darrow is quite a gruff, unromantic sort, and they spend a great deal of time apart, or avoiding each other. There is an unfortunate flip-side to this, but more on that later.
-The three moons are one of those little gems. Not the idea of multiple moons, which is a fairly obvious device in fantasy or science fiction, but the way she uses them, the associations they have, the names of the different phases. It adds interest and shows off, just a little.

Now, the not so good.
-The flip-side of Calwyn's and Darrow's more moderate romance is that it is rather too plain and Puritan. I don't want chapters of them aching with need for one another, or catching fire when the other one so much as looks at them, but sometimes the connection is just not believable. There's not enough there to hold them together, at least not that is made clear to the reader. Besides a long journey together and a tendency to annoy each other, there is nothing that shows a real spark, or at least nothing that invests the reader in their romance. I have no clue why they are in love.
-Halasaa is a great guy and all, and his mind-speech is a bit of interest, but the "All is one in the river of the circle of the tree of the great potato of life" spiel gets overbearing, like the wise, tree-hugging American Indian cliche or the old gnome in Upton Sinclair's The Gnomobile.
-The writing is good in fits and starts, but there's no consistency--in the next paragraph it can slide back into the mediocre. A promising thought or great line will peek through the fabric of the story, but the author either doesn't explore it or she beats it to death, usually by making use of poor sage Halasaa.
-She leans too heavily on the "givens" of the fantasy genre that no one is supposed to admit are given--the attributes of a true hero, the triumph of friends and love and loyalty over power and cruelty, the standard wants-to-rule the world villain, the temptations of ambition and power--they are the mainstay of practically any good fantasy, but they lose power if taken for granted. The writer has to find a balance between beating the reader over the head with them and assuming that everyone knows the spiel and using them only as convenience suits them. She (or he, but as I am a girl) has to assert their importance and explore them as if they are new ideas without sounding preachy or pretentious. She has to convey through her figurative pen that those ideals and temptations have personal meaning to her, and not simply refer the reader to Tolkien or C.S. Lewis for more details.

Well, I think the voices in my head have come to a general consensus. It is a promising series from a promising writer, and worth reading if you are willing to dig a little and endure a little, but for those of you who prefer your gold already purified and cut into tidy blocks, you may need to look for a more experienced author.