Title: The Unseen

Author: Jacob Devlin

Rating: 3/5

Release Date: May 9, 2017

Synopsis: 

Crescenzo and his friends may have survived their confounding journey to the enchanted realms of Florindale, but now they find themselves fighting for their sanity and lives while stuck on the other side of the very mirror they set out to destroy.

With their families trapped by a former ally with a crippling fear of the queen, Enzo, Rosana, and Zack must play a deadly game in Wonderland, where shadows are on the move, kings are at war, and one of them wants Rosana dead.

As darkness hovers over the world, the friends must lean on each other and stop the King of Hearts from following through on Avoria’s orders: Break them.

Review:

The Unseen is the sequel to The Carver by Jacob Devlin, and I was very excited to pick up this novel.  I enjoy how clean and crisp Devlin’s writing style is, and I was excited to see that his second novel takes place in Wonderland.  Devlin has explored an eclectic cast of characters that range from many different fairytales, and I enjoyed seeing his take on them.

However, The Unseen – like The Carver – was clearly inspired by the television series, Once Upon A Time.  I am usually a big fan of fairytale retellings, but there were too many similarities in The Unseen when compared with Once Upon A Time.  Many of the characters were the same, and they were thrown into Wonderland, which was used in the Once Upon A Time series as well.  Once Upon A Time was refreshing when it first released, but now I feel that the use of fairytale worlds and fairytale characters mixed together – such as in The Unseen and Once Upon A Time – is dried up.  Even though I love the idea behind The Unseen, and I enjoyed Devlin’s take on these different characters, I wish that there had more originality to his ideas.  For example, many of Devlin’s characters – such as Mulan, Pinnochio, and Peter Pan – were not only pulled from classic fairytales, but from Once Upon A Time as well.  Though the storyline of The Unseen was different from Once Upon A Time, I had a hard time separating the too.

That being said, I am amazed by Devlin’s writing skills.  Devlin’s writing is advanced, and I found his dialogue to be entertaining.  It is clear to me that Devlin is a seasoned author, and I enjoyed how his words flowed from page to page.  Devlin knows how to absorb the reader into his stories, and I enjoyed exploring the world that he has written about.  I just wished that his ideas had been more of his own.

If you are a fan of Once Upon A Time, I am sure that you will gain enjoyment from the Order of the Bell series.  But if you have not seen Once Upon A Time, I think that you will love this series even more because the ideas behind the Order of the Bell series will appear more original.  I do enjoy Devlin as an author, and I look forward to what he writes next.  I just hope that he will choose to write a new series soon that will better represent his talent.

*ARC provided by Blaze Publishing for an honest review.*

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