Order of the Seers The Red Order by Cerece Rennie Murphy

Before I start in on the book, I just have to say that Cerece is a gorgeous lady!  Just looking at her classy, genuine smiling face will make you want to read her work!

This is the second book in the Order of the Seers trilogy.  In this book, we have a group of seers who are supposedly rebels and being hunted by the Guild.  Meanwhile, in the Guild, we have some crazy experiments and evil geniuses.  The Red Order is being created by the guild, which is a team of seers who...work for the bad guys.

So, I had some issues with this book, but they were all user error, not writer error.  Even though this book works fine as a standalone, you don't want to do it that way and I wish I hadn't.  You're quickly brought up to speed on who the characters are and there are allusions to previous happenings, but you don't really need all of the details for those.  The problem I had is that I just didn't care.  Most of the bonding has to happen in the first book, and I haven't read it yet.  While reading the second book, this one, it took me halfway through before I even began to build a bond with any of the characters.  The other issue I had with this as a standalone is that at about page 180 we're introduced to a new character.  I'm hoping this character was introduced in the first book, because if not then it's a major flaw.  This new character is integral in the rest of the book, but we've never heard of him before.  He's a big player, even though his part is small.  Since I haven't read the first book, I don't know if he's a long-running character or if he was just invented to make the ending of this book happen.

Once I did get to the part where I cared about the characters, I actually found myself enjoying it.  The first half of the book, we have a few action-packed suspense scenes and a whole lot of unnecessary science and history.  Then we really start to see who each character is...their nuances.  We start to identify with both sides of the battle going on.  We become entangled in Murphy's world.

Though this isn't a perfect read, it was still satisfying.  Most likely at some point I'll go back and order the rest of the series and reread it.


*I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review