The Tattooed Duchess (A Fire Beneath the Skin Book 2) Kindle Edition

This is a review for the series, not this book. Books two and three of the series really should be sold as one book. There is no sense of conclusion at the end of book two, it's nothing more than a build-up to the next book.But. The series. Will surprise you with the high quality of the story. It is well motivated and well thought out, a few coincidences but nothing unbelievable. The characters, well they are slow to develop--but then again they're young so in retrospect it seems reasonable. You get the usual implicit guarantee that no one important will die, but you'll be surprised at who's not important.The main reason I'm writing this review for book two is because I hesitated to buy this book for months. Constantly worried that the weaknessess of the first book would come through strong, and the strengths would dissapear. The exact reverse happens. If anything books two and three are better than the first book, and by the end I was in awe at the complexity and originality of this story. I've heard others criticize the "love triangle" in the second book only to find that it is a real, realistic, love triangle that is absolutely necessary. So on and so forth, what in so many other books are endless forced coincidences are in this book all fitted together nicely into a seamless plot. Take my word for it and trust that in terms of plot there are few as good as this one.Let me be clear that I have trashed many other books. I am not one of those who will write unconditional positive reviews. When I do I mean it, these two books are worth a lot more than the four bucks it cost me to buy them.In reality I'd give this series four stars, because the writing is not awesome, but in the inflated grading environment of Amazonn it's definitely five stars. I mean, it's completely solid but just not GREAT. It does the job and flows beautifully, I'd just like it to be that much better, more descriptive with less words if you know what I mean. I'd give it marks away from awesome, but I am currently re-reading the entire series right now. I read a lot, and this one will be solidly in the rotation--something I didn't feel after the first book alone.

Having finished the serial, here are my final thoughts. First, getting a new installment of the serial each week was a really cool experience and I greatly enjoyed it.Plotwise, the Tattooed Duchess is a fun, easy-to-follow fantasy with intrigue, action, magic, and interesting characters. Like Ink Mage, the basic premise isn't wholly original, but the fun factor here keeps it from feeling stale. This was especially true reading it as a serial, where I found myself eagerly awaiting the next installment each week. I remember that while reading Ink Mage, which I read as a novel rather than as a serial, the format felt a little scattered. For someone reading The Tattooed Duchess as a novel, this may be the case once again, but it makes total sense as a serial with a new installment coming out each week so that we can stay engaged with the different characters. The serial format in Ink Mage led to a rushed ending with numerous editing errors, but I'm pleased to report that my fears that the same would happen in the Tattooed Duchess were unfounded. Aside from a few minor spelling errors, the writing is clean and the pacing is excellent.If I have one complaint about the Tattooed Duchess, it's the cliffhanger ending. I didn't mind the week-to-week cliffhangers between episodes, those helped keep me interested and it wasn't such a problem when I knew the next installment was only a week away. But after two months of cliffhangers, it would have been nice to have a little resolution before the long break until the next book. I'm not saying everything needs to be neatly tied up with a bow on top, but if Ink Mage went too far in one direction by rushing its conclusion, then The Tattooed Duchess goes too far the other way by failing to resolve even one single issue.Oh well. I'll be looking forward to the next book, and hoping Gischler doesn't keep us waiting too long for the next steps in this enjoyable serial.

Once again, the Storyline is quite well done, and once again, I did not write my review up because I wanted to start book 3. This continues where the previous book left off. Narrator once again does a Great job with Voices and Storyline.

The strange thing is that this is one of hte few cases where I feel that Book 2 was the best in the series. In book 1 the main character was rather unsympathetic and the side characters lacked relatability.Book 2 actually solved a lot of that. The heroine is now striving to do the right thing and the other characters have grown quite a bit. I was enjoying the tale overall.I do feel that the villains were poorly developed. The flashes we get of their leadership show a world where the author forced the situation rather than build something that made sense. (Typical when a story needs a large nation to perform a mass migratory attack.)But once you get past the bad villain this is an entertaining story with good characters. Its worth the read.

I read this book so fast just could not put it down

Excellent read

I enjoyed reading this series, it was funny and sad but made me laugh a lot as well and get worried for the hero’s.

This books carries on in fairly true form from it's predecessor. If I had to hark on another weakness is that there isn't really a build up to the end. Essentially, the author seems to have had a tickbox of events that had to finish before the end of the trilogy, and just decided to finish this book off because it reached an approximate page count of what a book should be. There was climax.That said, the good stuff from the previous book is all still there, so this error can be forgiven.

Enjoyed it overal