Second books in a trilogy carry a strange burden. They have to build on a debut readers already loved, push the story somewhere new, and lay track for a finale, all without the shiny newness of a first outing. Tides of Fortune by Lauryn Hamilton Murray takes on that middle-book challenge and mostly comes out ahead, swapping the closed-arena tension of the trials for something looser and roomier: a quest across a wild, dangerous world, with a prickly alliance along for the ride.
I have read a fair amount of YA fantasy shaped like this, and I want to be honest about both the pleasures and the growing pains here. So consider this your promise up front: nothing below gives away the turns that matter.
Charting the Course
Having survived the trials of the first book, Blaze is on the edge of becoming Queen of the Aquatori. She cannot rest on that, though. King Balen, the usurper who already holds one of the three enchanted Eyes, is hunting the Eye of the Soul, and its power would make him unstoppable. Finding it first means leaving the palace behind and heading into the Wildlands.
Her guide, of a sort, is Fox. He is clever, maddening, and holds cards he refuses to show. Their partnership is the kind where every helpful gesture arrives wrapped in a jab, and the question of whether Blaze can trust him hums under every scene. Around that spine, Murray widens the world: new courts, new languages, the orphans of old catastrophes, and a magic system with more moving parts than the debut let on.
Underneath the treasure hunt sits the question the series has always been circling. Blaze has spent her whole life as an outsider, and being handed a crown does not fix that so much as complicate it. Belonging, and the price of it, is the emotional current the plot rides on, and it gives the quest a weight that a simple race for a magic object would lack.
What Carries the Current
Tides of Fortune is strongest when it lets its characters breathe between the plot beats. A few things stood out to me:
- The banter has real snap. Blaze and Fox trade lines like fencers, and the humour lands without tipping into cutesy. A throwaway joke at a funeral tells you everything about how these people cope.
- Grief is handled with care. Loss threads through the story, and Murray refuses to rush anyone through it. One quiet scene built around ginger tea and a bad night does more for the romance than any grand declaration could.
- The world feels lived in. Markets, dialects, small cruelties, and small kindnesses give the setting texture. Side characters, especially the ones met on the road, arrive with histories that complicate Blaze’s neat sense of right and wrong.
- The stakes stay personal. Questions of power, freedom, and who gets to decide your worth sit at the centre, so the danger never feels abstract. The line about gilded cages still having bars stuck with me long after I closed the book.
Pacing improves as it goes, too. The opening stretch takes its time, but once the quest is properly under way, the chapters start pulling hard.
Where the Waters Grow Choppy
No book earns a place near the top of the shelf without a few honest flaws, and Tides of Fortune by Lauryn Hamilton Murray has them.
- The lore load is heavy. Etheri, Magi, Demari, three sisters, three Eyes, several courts, and a stack of proper nouns all jostle for room. Readers coming back after a gap may need a minute to find their footing, and a couple of reveals lean on backstory you have to hold carefully in your head.
- Middle-book scaffolding shows. A good portion of the story exists to move pieces into place for book three. It is done with skill, but you can feel the setup working beneath the surface, particularly in the closing chapters.
- The pull between Blaze and Fox can feel fated rather than earned. The chemistry is there, yet the story keeps flagging how much of their bond might be driven by forces outside their control, which now and then softens the swoon.
- A late shift in perspective may divide readers. Widening the lens adds depth, but it also pulls us away from the voice most people came for at a charged moment.
None of these sink the ship. They are the sort of quibbles that separate a very good sequel from a flawless one.
The Slow Burn at the Heart of It
For the romance readers: Tides of Fortune is a slow burn with sharp edges, closer in spirit to Twin Crowns than to anything steamy. The tension runs on distrust, buried history, and two guarded people circling each other on a long, cold road. If you like a love interest who is charming and slippery in equal measure, Fox will be exactly your flavour of trouble. Murray keeps the heat at a YA-appropriate simmer, favouring a caught breath and an unfinished sentence over anything explicit.
Murray’s Voice on the Page
Murray writes in first-person present tense, and her prose has a lyrical, sensory quality without turning purple. Short, punchy lines sit beside longer, rolling ones, and she has a gift for the small telling image: a purple orange in a foreign market, a scent clinging to bedsheets, ice spreading across a creek when a character’s temper slips. There is a Scottish cadence to the storm imagery that feels earned rather than decorative. Fans of the first book will find the style familiar and a shade more assured here.
If This Book Pulled You Under, Try These
Readers who enjoy this series will likely find plenty to love in:
- Twin Crowns by Catherine Doyle and Katherine Webber, for royal intrigue and enemies-to-something banter.
- Caraval and Once Upon a Broken Heart by Stephanie Garber, for lush settings and untrustworthy charmers.
- The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, for a reluctant heroine forced to perform for a watching court.
- Powerless by Lauren Roberts, for slow-burn romance stitched into a class-divided kingdom.
- The Prison Healer by Lynette Noni, for trials, secrets, and a heroine who keeps surviving the unsurvivable.
The Verdict from the Shore
Tides of Fortune by Lauryn Hamilton Murray is a confident, emotionally generous middle chapter that trades the tight shape of a competition for the sprawl of a road trip through a dangerous world. It asks more of your memory than the debut did, and it spends real energy setting up the finale, but it pays that effort back with sharp dialogue, a romance built on genuine friction, and a heroine whose hardest fight is with what other people want her to be.
If you finished Heir of Storms wanting more of Blaze, Fox, and this stormy world, Tides of Fortune by Lauryn Hamilton Murray will feel like coming home to a place that has grown wilder while you were away. Start with book one, then let the current take you.