Review, Interview and Givaway: The Reckoning by Alma Katsu

 The Reckoning on Amazon

Book Description:

SECOND IN ALMA KATSU’S GRIPPING SUPERNATURAL TRILOGY THAT BEGAN WITH THE TAKER Lanore McIlvrae is the kind of woman who will do anything for love. Including imprisoning the man who loves her behind a wall of brick and stone.

She had no choice but to entomb Adair, her nemesis, to save Jonathan, the boy she grew up with in a remote Maine town in the early 1800s and the man she thought she would be with forever. But Adair had other plans for her. He used his mysterious, otherworldly powers to give her eternal life, but Lanore learned too late that there was a price for this gift: to spend eternity with him. And though he is handsome and charming, behind Adair’s seductive façade is the stuff of nightmares. He is a monster in the flesh, and he wants Lanore to love him for all of time.

Now, two hundred years after imprisoning Adair, Lanore is trying to atone for her sins. She has given away the treasures she’s collected over her many lifetimes in order to purge her past and clear the way for a future with her new lover, Luke Findley. But, while viewing these items at an exhibit at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, Lanore suddenly is aware that the thing she’s been dreading for two hundred years has caught up to her: Adair has escaped from his prison. He’s free— and he will come looking for her. And she has no idea how she will save herself.

With the stunningly imaginative storytelling and rich characterizations that fascinated readers worldwide and made The Taker a singular and memorable literary debut and an international sensation, Alma Katsu once again delivers “a powerful evocation of the dark side of romantic love” (Publishers Weekly) in her breathtaking new novel

My Review

Well we got a tiny bit of romance this time around. But we are learning more of the story, this book picked up exactly where book 1 left us. I liked that, that we didn't skip a chunk of time between the two books.
Adair is obsessed with Lanny, first with revenge then it was just to see her to be near her.

We got more of Adair's story and we meet a new immortal. All this after we learn that Adair has been released from his prison that Lanny and Jonathan built, his release was 200 years after imprisonment. 

Interview with Author

1.  How did you come up with the name The Taker?

That wasn’t the original name. As a matter of fact, it took ten years to write the first book and for most of that time, it didn’t have a title. If you read the book, you can see why! The story is about how people do bad things and how they must earn redemption to find peace, and so the title I ended up using when I sent the book out on submission was ‘The Fallen’. Then Lauren Kate’s book came out, and the feeling from the editor and agent was that we couldn’t use a similar title. ‘The Taker’ was proposed by my agent (at the time.)
2.  Who was your most and least favorite characters in the series so
far (book 1& 2)
I tend to like characters, not so much because I’d like them for a friend but because they’re interesting to write. Adair is probably my favorite character to write because he’s a very complex character and also because when he decides something has to be a certain way, he goes for it. No matter how difficult or inconvenient, he throws everything he has into it. My least favorite character would be Jude. By principle, he never takes a stand; he’s all about deception. You never know where you really stand with him.

3.  When will we get to read book 3?
It’s looking like we’re holding to schedule now, so unless something comes up to knock us off the production schedule, we’re looking at January 2014.
4.  Did you have a favorite scene?  In either book
I wrote and rewrote the scenes in The Taker so many times (10 years!) that I’m most familiar with them…  One of my favorites is when Lanny goes with her father to answer an alarm sounded at their neighbor’s house, only to find out that her rival for Jonathan’s affections—who she just had a fight with the night before—has gone missing. She must struggle with her guilt while staying mum as she trudges behind her father through the woods and snow, hoping they’ll find the runaway bride, knowing in the pit of her stomach that it will not end well. Knowing she’s responsible for it, in a sense, and not being able to say anything.

5.  What keeps you motivated while you are writing?

To me, writing is like solving a very complicated puzzle. I want to get it all right. Also, I hate cliché. Absolutely hate it. So the challenge is expressing things in new, fresh ways, coming up with characters and situations that you haven’t seen before. Which is why these books aren’t genre: they’re not plot-driven, they’re more character driven.
  
6 What do you like to read, when you aren't writing?
I read very widely. Lately I’ve been on a jag of mysteries, suspense and thrillers. I tend to like to read books that present a challenge for the writer. For instance, I just finished Ben Winters’ The Last Policeman. It’s about a detective who is trying to solve a murder, but the end of the world is coming—a meteor is going to crash into the earth in a few months—and so the story is really about how do you choose to face your destruction. By going crazy or by clinging to the ideals you’ve had your whole life? Interesting premise, but for a writer it presents a lot of problems to be overcome, and so I was curious as to how he pulled it off. Or didn’t. Books like that are instructive to other writers. I’m always thinking about how to make my writing better.

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