The Underground City by H.P. Mallory (Lily Harper #2)

4 Stars

In the second book in this series it takes up right where the first one left off. I mean, exactly! The same exact scene. Bill and Lily are back at their apartment from their first mission to the Underground City. Tallis has shown up and wants to continue Lily's training with her sword. She isn't long into her training when she receives her next mission. This one will take Lily to the Sewers, which is another "circle of hell". Tallis knows another shortcut which takes the group through pipes containing poo water. They retrieve their soul most easily, but find themselves summoned by Alaire.

Alaire is leader of The Underground City and bad news all the way around. He has some sort of fascination with Lily and meeting Lily only cements this weird interest.   On the way back through the Dark Wood, Tallis takes Lily and Bill to a pub/inn type place and proceeds to get “blootered”.  Lily and Bill wake up to find themselves abandoned in the Dark Wood.  Lily’s next mission takes her to the “prison” level of the underground city, but she must do this alone as Tallis has not shown his face yet.  Overall, her first trip alone (well, Angel Bill is there, but he’s not much help) is actually pretty successful, however, Lily will finds there are far reaching consequences to some of her actions in the Underground City. 

Overall, I loved this book.  I started the third book right away and had to keep going back to separate the second and third books in my head for this review.  We get to know both Lily and Bill better.  Bill is a character that grows on you the more you are around him.  He is quite protective of Lily and that is endearing.  Little by little we learn more about Tallis.  Not all of it is good, but one can certainly understand the attraction that Lily feels towards him.  One thing that keeps coming up with him though is that he obviously has a lot of self-loathing and whenever he is around Lily he pushes her away and talks about how bad he is.  The discrepancy with Tallis is that whenever he is around Alaire he defends himself and doesn’t think he is the same caliber of evil as Alaire.  Once Tallis is out of Alaire’s presence though Tallis is back to talking about how evil he is himself.  You can’t have it both ways Tallis!