Title: Scent of Magic (Healer #2)
Author: Maria V. Snyder
Genre: paranormal, fantasy, magic, adventure
Publisher: Harlequin Teen 
Publication Date: January 2013
Pages: 414 pages
Rating: 3.5 stars

Synopsis (from goodreads):
Hunted, Killed—Survived?

As the last Healer in the Fifteen Realms, Avry of Kazan is in a unique position: in the minds of her friends and foes alike, she no longer exists. Despite her need to prevent the megalomanical King Tohon from winning control of the Realms, Avry is also determined to find her sister and repair their estrangement. And she must do it alone, as Kerrick, her partner and sole confident, returns to Alga to summon his country into battle.

Though she should be in hiding, Avry will do whatever she can to support Tohon’s opponents. Including infiltrating a holy army, evading magic sniffers, teaching forest skills to soldiers and figuring out how to stop Tohon’s most horrible creations yet; an army of the walking dead—human and animal alike and nearly impossible to defeat.

War is coming and Avry is alone. Unless she figures out how to do the impossible … again

My Review:

After reading Touch of Power (the first book in the Healer series) I couldn’t wait to get back to Avry, Kerrick and the rest of the characters from the Thirteen Realms.

Avry, back from the dead, is a healer on a mission – to stop Tohon from taking over the Realms and experimenting on the innocent with his army of the living dead. After deciding to separate from Kerrick (and letting him fight his own battles in the North), Avry joins Astrid’s army in disguise and gathers as much intelligence as she can under her new assumed identity. Hiding in plain sight and showing just how good a soldier she can be, Avry manages to get close to both her old friends (the Monkeys, Belen) but also her estranged sister, Noelle.

Meanwhile, Kerrick is back in his own kingdom trying to amass an army of his own to fight against King Tohon. But things don’t go according to plan and Kerrick finds himself trying to stay one step ahead of enemies he didn’t even know he had.

There’s a lot going on in this book and I enjoyed the layout – every Avry chapter was followed by a brief overview of what was going on in Kerrick’s part of the world. Simultaneously we, the readers, were able to follow both their stories with ease. The only problem with this was it meant the novel as whole missed the spark of banter between the two leads that I enjoyed so much from the first novel.

I loved getting to see a new side of Avry – not just a healer but a warrior in her own right and a fairly kick-arse one at that. The training of her group of soldiers was interesting and I liked to see the camaraderie between them.

In many ways this book is a transition novel – bridging the gap between the first novel and the final novel of the series. There’s a lot of ground work being laid and stuff that doesn’t seem to be all that relevant at the moment but is just leading up for the next book. I enjoyed reading it – there’s A LOT of surprises and action, drama, betrayal going on but it fell a little short of my expectations.

I would definitely recommend this book for fans of the first one and can’t wait for the third book to be released in a year’s time!

Purchase the novel from:

Amazon / Book Depository