I loved The Orb and the Airship, so naturally I was excited to read the second book in the series and discover the continuing adventures of Grayden, Wynn, Beren, Dalmir, and especially Captain Marik in this crew. And I'm happy to say that Mantles of Oak and Iron does not disappoint!

Unsurprisingly, Captain Marik remains my favorite character. The day the airship pirate captain with rough edges and a heart of gold isn’t my favorite character (or at least in my top five) is the same day y’all should hustle me off to a doctor and make sure I haven’t hit my head and spontaneously developed a new personality (or been taken over by an alien parasite). Is he perfect? No. He’ll be the first to tell you he’s no hero. But he wants to do good, more than he’s been doing, and it’s wonderful to see him continuing down the hero’s path here and seeking to work with Dalmir and the rest of our friends in the fight against evil. And I also liked seeing how the relationships between him and his crew continue to develop as secrets are revealed and trust is tested.

Another aspect of this book I appreciated was seeing more of the broad scope of the story and world. We get this in multiple ways, actually. We see new areas of the conflict and new parts of the world as the boys undergo training at the academy, Dalmir seeks to aid and be aided by the leaders of the free part of the world, and Marik and his crew travel and do their thing. Additionally, we get some new POVs, both heroic and villainous, that reveal additional facets of what’s going on.

On that note, I do recommend rereading The Orb and the Airship before you pick up Mantles of Oak and Iron. This is not a criticism in any sense, to be clear. But the Turrim Archive is an epic gaslamp fantasy world, and the first few chapters open with (I think) some of those new POVs. As a result, I found myself in a loop of “Wait, who’s this? Is this person new, or should I recognize that name?” It does not help at all that I read The Orb and the Airship almost a year ago, and I’ve read a lot of other books since. I caught up after a few chapters, but it still made for a little bit of a rough entry. (Of course, some of you probably reread previous books in the series before picking up the new installment anyway, and I normally would’ve done that, but . . . time. I do not get along with it right now.)

That said, I did enjoy the new POVs, and I liked meeting some new characters and getting to know some minor characters better. My favorite of the new characters is Ioan — by midway through his second appearance on page, I'd decided I wanted to be friends with him. (In his first appearance, I was still stuck trying to figure out which names I should and shouldn’t already know.) I mean, he’s a friend of Beren (my favorite character after Marik), so that already won him some points . . . but I also just like him in general, and he’d probably still have snuck onto my favorites list even without Beren’s boost. Besides Ioan, I enjoyed meeting the Regeont. There’s also an antagonistic POV character who I was initially meh on but am now kind of invested in, and I'm very excited to see where his storyline goes in book three. If you want to know who it is, well, you'll have to read the book for yourself.

Spoiler

Ericole. It's Ericole. Initially I was like "Who is this — wait, is this the guy who kidnapped Beren? Why are we hanging out with him. Then we saw him interact with the Regeont, and I was like "Ok, this could be interesting . . ." And then we got his reaction to what happened to the Regeont, and his interaction with Thordem, and I was like "OHO! This is why we're hanging out with him! Oh, this will be good!"

Character-wise, one last thing I appreciated was that Mantles, like its predecessor, is pretty much a nomance. While I noticed a seed or two being planted that I expect will sprout in the future, for the most part, this book is focused on friendships, alliances, and familial relationships, and I really appreciated that. I love a good romance as much as the next girl, but sometimes you want to focus on other things!

As far as the plot goes, Mantles starts a little slow (especially due to the new POVs), but it picks up fairly quickly. I enjoyed the twists and turns of the adventure, and I think the different subplots were balanced well. Everything has just the right amount of space to breathe without being drawn out too much. And I have to say, it's refreshing to read an epic fantasy that's not ridiculously long! It's a very comfortable 400-some pages, long enough to sink your teeth into but also short enough to finish in an afternoon (if reading in one sitting) or under a week (if you're reading a bit every night, as I do).

All in all, an excellent book, and I'm excited to get my hands on book 3!