The Underworld by Jessica Sorensen
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
"The Underworld" picks up where "Fallen Star" left off. Gemma knows her mother was remanded to The Underworld by Stephan, the evil bastard/father of Aislin and Alex. Everyone agrees that if anyone knows how to fight Stephan's nefarious plot, it would be Jocelyn, Gemma's mom. However--again--she's probably dead or worse.
Probably.
So they figure a way to find out whether Jocelyn is alive. Laylen the vampire takes Gemma to a vampire club, where they consult the eldest, most-powerful vampire in the land, Vlad. He reports that, indeed, Jocelyn is miraculously alive, and serving as a slave to the Queen of the Underworld.
The next problem is how to get to the Underworld, and return Jocelyn to the world of the living and human. To do this, Gemma has to trust her annoying friend-boy, Alex, and deal with another pest, the Foreseer, Nicholas. It seems that only by developing her emerging powers, will Gemma be able to rescue her mother, and, hopefully, put an end to Stephan's wicked, humanity-dooming scheme once and for all.
Once again, Jessica Sorensen has crafted a tight, beautifully paced novel. In "The Underworld," we delve deeper into the series's mythology, learning why certain people have certain gifts, and why certain people just suck. I love that the entire book is not one long action sequence, but a series of smaller missions that occur. There's time to take a breath between adrenaline rushes, but only just.
In many series, there is a quality lag between book one and book two. Ms Sorensen deftly avoids this, developing the characters from book one, and introducing some new blood as well. So far, this is an amazing, exciting, fast-paced series, and I can't wait for book three.
Recommended.