Sacrifice by Mayandree Michel

Title: Sacrifice
Series: The Descendants
Author: Mayandree Michel
Previous Books in Series: Betrayal
Rating: 3.5 stars
Length: 5222 Kindle units
 
Refresher: After a very confusing segment that takes place in the modern day, Cordelia travels back in time to learn that she is the Empress of the Ischero, a group of descendants of the Greek gods.
 
When I read Betrayal, I was of two minds about it. I felt like it had a really interesting mythology, but the story went off in some very confusing directions. I was hoping that with a lot of the bewildering time travel stuff out of the way, the second book would be much better in terms of story. In this I was disappointed.
 
It’s not that Sacrifice was totally bad. There were some very good elements. The love triangle/quadrilateral was particularly interesting. Cordelia had to choose between the boy she fell in love with on her own and the boy the gods have chosen to be her mate. Of course, I was put in the uncomfortable position of being on the side of the rapist/murderer (which means less when you’re talking about shape-changing immortals but is nonetheless disturbing. Seriously, YA novels, why do you try to make horrible people appealing? I’m a 31-year-old who can distinguish fiction from reality, but the intended audience of these books is made up of impressionable 13-year-old girls.)
 
Anyway, I liked the characters, and I liked the mythology. (I always find it interesting when the Greek gods are characters to see which ones are the “good guys” and which are the “bad guys,” especially when these differ from my own conceptions.) But I once again had a hard time following the plot, particularly as it relates to time travel. Cordelia’s main goal in the book is to bring her parents back to life, despite the insistence from her subjects that she should be focusing on other things. I don’t want to try to explain the process of how she goes about finding them and getting to them, as it would involve spoilers, but suffice it to say that I got to the end of the book and was not entirely sure what had happened.
 
All in all, I felt like I enjoyed the story, but I really wish it had been better written. But it’s about as good as the first one, so if you liked Betrayal, Sacrifice is definitely worth a read. Will I tune in for a third installment? I have not yet decided. For now I will keep following Mayandree Michel’s blog and decide what I want closer to the release date.
 
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