I received a free copy of this book from Booksprout in exchange for my honest review.

The Castle of Nightmares is the second book in the Tales of Crow series by Chris Ward.  It’s seven years after the events of the first book, and Jun, one of the few survivors, has actively been searching for Crow.  Thanks to the crazy people on the internet, he finds Crow in Romania.

I liked this book better than the first.  There was a larger cast of characters with more varied backgrounds than we saw in the first book.  There was also significantly less personal angst, which I appreciated.  I thought the characters interacted well with each other, and the author did a lovely job with his descriptions of the area.  Another mark in the plus column is that I spotted only a few proofreading errors.

Like the first book, this one focused on a different point of view for each chapter.  I’m not sure why, but it didn’t feel quite as choppy this time around.  Lots of bloody death, some of it actually a bit surprising.  Another surprise was who ended up being the heroes of this story.

The one thing I really didn’t like was the extremely abrupt ending.  I realize this is supposed to suck readers in so they’ll go on to the third and fourth books in the series, but I’m not sure I’m invested enough in the characters to bother.  I have no patience for Jun at this point.  The little girl, though….it might be worth it to see how she turns out.  There was a bit of foreshadowing near the end that piqued my interest in her.  Will it be enough?