I wrote something about the first Falcon Lord book last month, here. I would now like to add a few words about the sequel, the title of which also serves as the headline to this blog entry. I can't be as enthusiastic. We return to the same familiar island and meet the old gang again, and the plot is handled well -- a nice mix of the new the old, and some twists on the elements that are carried over. BUT ... Metrov's command of prose style seems to have left him. I'll give just one sentence by way of example. In the midst of the climactic battle of good and evil, when all his epic machinery comes together, Metrov writes this: "The fighters became pawns in a dizzying ballet, a symphony, cacophonous and head-splitting, orchestrated by a devil's baton." There are lots of ways in which I hate that sentence. Let's start with the end: "orchestrated by a devil's baton." An orchestra might be conducted by a devil, and by a natural me...