The Betrayed by Lisa Tawn Bergren

In the event of Vincenzo's joining Lord Abramo, the Gifted feel they are no longer safe in the open. Hasani's disturbing visions confirm this fact. Father Piero leads them around Italia to places he feels are safe. But every time they reach one of these such places, something happens that forces them to have to relocate. Daria feels time is running out for her, and this is confirmed by disturbing visions she has been having. More and more of her friends are disappearing, and soon, she herself is betrayed by her uncle and kidnapped by the Sorcerer. On his dark isle she finds that her uncle has betrayed them all by handing her and several others over to the Sorcerer to use for his own purposes. At the mercy of Lord Abramo, Daria finds comfort only in her Lord. But as the Sorcerer continues to strip things away from her, she doesn't know how long she can last.

The body of The Betrayed is more entertaining than The Begotten, but the result is still the same. Lisa has got to work on her ends if she ever expects to go anywhere as an original author. In the end, she even betrayed a prophecy she had set up because she was afraid of a key character death! But she was not afraid to fix everything she could think of to fix, even the insignificant reclaiming of a pet bird!

The characters did not grow better or worse. They stayed the same as they were in the first installment. Daria remains to be imperfect, Gianni and Piero remain perfect. The only progress Lisa made in the character department was not getting any worse.

One good thing does come from the end of this book-and that is that Vincenzo does not have a last chapter conversion. But he does not become completely evil like Lord Abramo either. Lisa is probably trying to keep his character open-ended for the last book, but the result is one of her best characters yet. I hope Lisa uses his character in an interesting way in the final installment of this series and learns from him how to make a realistic character.

The idea of the Gifted is still interesting. I am interested to see how Lisa is going to end this series. Trouble is brewing with the beginning of an inveitible romance at the end of the book, but there is hope because Lisa may still fulfill her prophecy.

We shall simply have to wait and see.

3 stars