Review: Wayfinder by C. E. Murphy

Title: Wayfinder (Worldwalker Duology #2)
Author: C. E. Murphy
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Heat Index: 2 out of 5
Release Date: September 6th, 2011
Word/Page Count: 352 pages
Format: Purchased

THE TRUTH WILL SET YOU FREE—IF IT DOESN’T KILL YOU FIRST

Lara Jansen is a truthseeker, gifted—or cursed—with the magical ability to tell honesty from lies. Once she was a tailor in Boston, but now she has crossed from Earth to the Barrow-lands, a Faerie world embroiled in a bloody civil war between Seelie and Unseelie. Armed with an enchanted and malevolent staff which seeks to bend her to its dark will, and thrust into a deadly realm where it’s hard to distinguish friend from foe, Lara is sure of one thing: her love for Dafydd ap Caerwyn, the Faerie prince who sought her help in solving a royal murder and dousing the flames of war before they consumed the Barrow-lands.

But now Dafydd is missing, perhaps dead, and the Barrow-lands are closer than ever to a final conflagration. Lara has no other choice: she must harness the potent but perilous magic of the staff and her own truthseeking talents, blazing a path to a long-forgotten truth—a truth with the power to save the Barrow-lands or destroy them.

Just in case you missed the other review, Wayfinder is part 2 in C.E. Murphy's Worldwalker duology. And while Wayfinder opens with a pretty decent summary of everything that's happened up to that point, it would really be kind of ridiculous to not read Truthseeker before reading Wayfinder.

That said, I find myself with pretty much the same feelings for Wayfinder as I had for Truthseeker. I loved the world=-building in this pair of books, loved the fantasy plot, loved the secondary characters, but... the 'romance' fell really, really short. Which wouldn't be that big of a deal, except for the fact that the driving force behind Lara's actions was supposedly her feelings for Dafydd.

I just couldn't get behind the hero and heroine's feelings for each other. They were 'told' to me rather than showed, and because I couldn't really feel it for them, I just didn't really care for them as characters. I found myself being more drawn to Ioan and Aerin and even Lara's humans back home. Since this was my first time reading anything by this author, I'm left to believe that maybe romance just isn't Ms. Murphy's forte. I will be checking out her other books, however, because other than the critical apathy I felt for the heroine, I otherwise really enjoyed the writing and the plot.