Be My Enemy

Be My Enemy (Everness, 2) by Ian McDonald, September 4, 2012. 280 pages. Published by Pyr. Source: Publisher.

Everett Singh has escaped with the Infundibulum from the clutches of Charlotte Villiers and the Order, but at a terrible price. His father is missing, banished to one of the billions of parallel universes of the Panoply of All World, and Everett and the crew of the airship Everness have taken a wild, random Heisenberg Jump to a random parallel plane. Everett is smart and resourceful and from a frozen earth far beyond the Plenitude plans to rescue his family. But the villainous Charlotte Villiers is one step ahead of him.

First Sentence:

The car came out of nowhere. 

Oh my goodness! When I started on Be My Enemy I thought I had forgotten some vital piece from the end of Planesrunner because the beginning was just crazy!

I was both surprised and excited when Everett and the crew of Everness found their way to E1. I was not really expecting that Everett and company would be making a stop their or that E1 would play such a huge role in the second book, but was excited to learn more about that desolate plane were the first gate was created. There are really no words to describe the vast creepiness that is E1 without spoiling it for those who have yet to read Be My Enemy. But I will tell you this, it is beyond imagination to think of the horror that befell humanity on it and the Nahn and black tower will definitely linger in your mind for some time after you read about it.

Ian McDonald's writing and ability to tell a great story is one of the reasons I cannot get enough of this series. I really enjoy how he is able to weave together a story that jumps between characters and earths' into one whole story that is impossible to turn away from. While the plot looks complicated in the beginning and like it will not come together and create a whole picture, Mr. McDonald does a great job pulling all the threads of the story together as the book progresses.

In Be My Enemy it was nice to see more depth in the characters and that you got to see a different side to a couple of the Everness crew members, like, Captain Sixsmyth and Sharky. But what I enjoyed most about the characters in book two, especially Everett, would have to be that they are really starting to come together as a team and even an odd family of sorts. 

So, the one things I liked most about Be My Enemy would have to be that I never knew what to expect while reading it. I loved that I failed to figure out every little step that the characters and plot would take in this book, and that the story generally went in the complete opposite way that I thought it was going to. It definitely made the book all the more interesting because you literally did not know what was going to happen from page to page, which was a fun change for me as a reader.

Even though Be My Enemy was super good, the beginning of the book almost felt like it came out of nowhere and left me feeling just a little confused when I started it. While I was extremely confused int he beginning, I loved the way that it ended up playing to the story line and how the actions of the 'new' character forced Everett to look closely at some of the choices he would make near the end of the book.

Final Verdict: Be My Enemy was a crazy whirlwind that didn't let me go till the very end.

Be My Enemy earns 5 out of 5 pineapples.

Everness:
Planesrunner
Be My Enemy