Also dieses Audiobuch mit Musik ist wirklich toll! Dass ich die Geschichte mag, wusste ich ja schon. Und das Hörbuch ist wirklich gut gelesen! Auch die Musik passt für mein Gefühl perfekt dazu! ( )

"He shot a bolt from the crossbow into his son's heart, but Gahrumet didn't die; he was healed. . . ." She closed the window and turned around. "It's nothing but a fairy tale, Jacob."

"And? Everything in this world sounds like a fairy tale. I'm dying for having said the name of a Fairy!" He stepped toward her and brushed the snowflakes from her hair. "Why shouldn't there be a weapon that brings death when it's wielded in hatred but gives life when it's used out of love?"
-page 69

I couldn't stop reading! This second installment of the Mirrorworld series was written with the perfect amount of magic, adventure, and suspense. I am now drawn in far behind the mirror, just as Jacob was the first time he entered this other world. ( )

Cornelia Funke gives us a world that is dark, dangerous, and exhilarating. A world where King Arthur did exist, where warlocks make castles disappear and where men with skin of Jade and Carnelian are conquering the many kingdoms around them. Where a fairy curse can slowly take your life. Where your only hope is a magic crossbow.
In Reckless Jacob is followed into this dangerous world by his brother who he has to save from becoming a monster. In Fearless after saving his brother it is Jacob's own life that is at stake. ( )

Jacob Reckless is one of the best protagonists I've encountered in a long time. You really want him to survive the curse of the Dark Fairy and you are really rooting for he and Fox to finally proclaim their love for each other. I'm looking forward to seeing what happens next to Jacob Reckless and Fox in future Mirrorworld adventures. ( )

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: I am convinced that this series is cruelly aimed at obsessive completist readers. The cliffhanger at the end of book one makes this book a MUST-READ NOW and, through the magic of Kindle, I was able to read the books back-to-back. I warn all who come after me: To sign up for this voyage into Mirrorworld is to commit to the whole cycle.

I am in.

What happens during the course of this book is that Jacob comes to understand something he'd never given much thought to: My love for you creates my responsibility for you creates a web of obligation that is endless...and as addictive as any narcotic. While we who have read the first book know what a price Jacob has paid, in fact what a price he paid after making a sacrifice that even he isn't quite aware of the dimensions of yet, we're probably not expecting the antagonist of this book.

In fact, I guarantee we're unprepared for the existence of the antagonist of this book. And that's probably Author Funke's most clever sleeve-ace yet. It plays well.

There are the accustomed delights of reading this series' world-building fillips. These are numerous, though enumerating them for you isn't really something worth doing in a review. There is a Fandom wiki, of course there is!, and I didn't look but am willing to bet there's fanfic on AO3. The reason is that Author Funke used every conceivable fairy-tale source to draw her world out from and has made it into a near-seamless whole. (Where there are seams that I can perceive, eg Goyls' method of transmission, it felt to me as though they were intentional not born of inattention to source material.)

The problem I had wth this entry is how kinetic, nay frenetic, it is. We go from pillar to post and back again; Fox is with us, Nerron the treasure-hunting half-Goyl whose existence is new to this book is against us; we're never for a moment at rest, able to take stock, pause to reflect. It's exactly what Author Funke intends, and it's a valid narrative technique but in this reader it creates a sense of distance from the characters. I'm so deep in the world that I don't get to experience his progress through his (final?) days.

Until I read this:

"If you catch your own children in the circle...then you can use the years you take from them for yourself. You're just taking back the life you gave them in the first place. The more of it, the better."

That was a gut-punch of a trap set for overeager treasure hunters, wasn't it?! And the sheer violence of the stakes set...if you're not a relative of the curse-setter, you're still going to die in the circle but it won't keep the curse-setter alive...could not be more urgent. Now that Jacob has found this evil place, he thinks he's trapped in the curse.

Fox, his shifter gal-pal, isn't having that. As always, the woman's love saves the man from his stupidity and greed. Though let's be fair to Author Funke, this time Jacob's greed was simply the desire to live that we all suffer from. And since Fox very much wants Jacob still alive, she's hardly just going to watch as he dies from a curse she can stop from progressing...if she's willing to do something that's very, very hard to do and commit murder.

Killing someone/thing in a struggle isn't murder. The intent to kill, the set purpose and the planning of the act...that's murder. Will she murder to save Jacob's life?

You'll have to read the book.

The ending is tremendously exciting. ( )