Golden Healer is the second book in the Curse of Time series by M.J. Mallon.
I think the story and the author have potential. The book has some lovely moments between friends and family members. The personalities of different characters differ, which is good. Amelina, the main character, is a good person for whom I'm not opposed to rooting. Plus, she has a lot of interesting skills. There are also some creepy and scary scenes and a few scenes that are just cool.
Unfortunately, that's about it.
Even though some dialogue is nice, most of it is unnatural, forced, and staged.
There are too many repetitions of what we already know.
The book overexplains very often.
Instead of working hard, Amelina simply receives one magical crystal that can help her after another. Instead of learning, she just knows how to use them correctly. Instead of seeking answers, stuff just happens to her. She simply has dreams that explain everything, or some magical beings find her and tell her everything. I don't like it at all.
Amelina has a weird relationship with the main villain, Ryder (or at least he's controlled by the main villain). He hurt her mentally and physically in the past. But instead of getting yet another crystal to protect herself from him, instead of using some magic for protection, instead of doing something to fight him, instead of being really afraid of him, or hating him, or at least intensely disliking him, Amelina is just mildly concerned when he's around. It feels like Amelina knows she has plot armor, so she can wait until dealing with Ryder.
At some point, Amelina is given a mighty crystal that can change the world for the worse in the wrong hands. Why? Why use her and not an army of incredibly powerful magical beings that have close to no chance to fail? Why give her the crystal at all if it's so dangerous? Sure, the crystal is supposed to "heal" Ryder, but why risk the entire world if it's so dangerous? Either heal him by using something else or just lock him up so he can't harm any more people. It truly felt like the whole situation was created to manufacture stakes.
In the end, reading this book made me annoyed much more often than it gave me any positive feelings. As I said, there are some good aspects to the book. The world has potential. If the dialogue was good and the characters' actions made more sense, I could've enjoyed the story. But sure, it's possible that you won't mind the dialogue and won't see any of the issues I talked about. To each their own.
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