Tell me are you really free? Tell me am I really free? Is the world frozen right in its tracks? Let me show you how to keep your crown. Let’s fight gold with The Wyvern’s Spur, by Kate Novak and Jeff Grubb.
Synopsis:
More than a hunk of junk, the Wyvern’s Spur has moldered in a crypt for fifteen generations until now. The Wyvernspur family’s powerful heirloom has been stolen, and grand wizard and patriarch Drone Wyvernspur is the first to fall to the ancient item’s curse. The family fool, Giogi, is left to find it, but even recovering the spur cannot guarantee his clan’s safety. Fortunately, the famous halfling bard Olive Ruskettle and a mysterious and talented mage named Cat are determined to help. But when betrayal and enchantment threaten Giogi’s progress, he must invoke the spur’s awesome might… or become its next victim!
Source: Goodreads
SPOILERS BELOW
We now return to the Realms for the sequel to Alias’s first adventure. However, as it happens, Alias herself does not appear in this volume. Instead, the focus is placed on two other characters which were introduced in that book: halfling bard/thief Olive Ruskettle, and foppish nobleman Giogioni Wyvernspur. Now, Olive makes sense as a POV character, since she was an important companion to Alias and got her own character arc; but Giogioni? He was a very minor character; not one of Alias’s allies, but a minor comic relief role. So, at first glance, he seems an odd choice for main protagonist status. Still, Azure Bonds was really well written and quickly got me invested in its characters. Can The Wyvern’s Spur do the same with Giogioni?
Okay, look, I have to get this out of the way right off the bat. Early on in the book, Jade refers to Giogioni as JoJo. And, as the timing happened to work out, I was watching Vento Aureo at the same time I was reading this book. So, past that point, I couldn’t stop mentally picturing Giogioni as Giorno Giovanna, despite the two characters being otherwise nothing alike. Such is the cross every JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure watcher must bear: forever seeing imaginary JoJo references in unrelated media.
But seeing as how Jade’s come up, let’s talk about her. One of the dangling plot threads introduced in the previous book was the existence of a number of other magical simulacrums similar to Alias. I was naturally expecting that they would play a role in the sequels, so I was very interested when the book introduced one of them, Jade More. I was excited to see how she would be developed… except she wasn’t. She was immediately killed off. Totally worth the wait, right? Well, that really got things off on the wrong foot for me, and set a sour tone for the rest of the book.
In the end, I was never really able to get into The Wyvern’s Spur. I can’t care about a story unless I care about the characters, and I never really got interested in all the various members of the Wyvernspur clan the way I did Alias’s band. It didn’t help that Olive spent the first half of the book polymorphed into a donkey – while amusing at moments, it meant that the entire weight of the narrative had to be carried by Giogioni, and he just wasn’t up to the task.
Here’s hoping the third book in the trilogy is able to deliver a tale more on par with the first.
Final Rating: 2/5
profmorbius 