Legend of the Tempest Teaser is the third entry in the award-winning Stormwatch Diaries series. This MG / YA offering by Kristiana Sfirlea advances the characters and plot of the first two novels of a world populated by character angels, inherent magical abilities, ghost wargs, time paradoxes, sentient stormclouds, and legends that are true.
(Yes, all of this is described in the first two stories. Yes, the main character also speaks directly to the reader and breaks the fourth page-wall, similar to what I’m doing now. Yes, I made up the word page-wall and am proud of it.)
This third book finds not one, but two, main characters in Rose Skylar and Sephone Darrow. Not only are they retelling the events they’re living through, they’re communicating to each other via a diary, and referencing you, the reader, while doing it. While this may sound confusing, the author’s skill never allows this to descend into nonsense. In one thread, Sephone and her team are cast into a jail in search of an elusive legend as well as her friend Aiden’s aunt. Sephone has to deal not only with her dangerous surroundings but her feelings of betrayal from Aiden. In the other, Rose encounters a mysterious traveling waxwork museum that comes to her living quarters. She doesn’t trust the proprietors, Viren Well and Atlas Good (of Well and Good’s Waxworks) who have taken an unusual interest in Rose herself and her secret missions. The novel alternates between the two young ladies, negative Sephone playing off Rose’s sunny personality, until climaxing in a spectacular ending.
The last book ended on a cliffhanger, a personal pet peeve of mine, but all is forgiven as this book not only points out the teaser (pun intended) of an ending but markets it. This novel ends with a few dangling threads but manages to still conclude satisfactorily. I can’t say I liked one narrative (Sephone’s or Rose’s) over the other. What I can say is I enjoyed Sephone’s character over Rose’s this time around, and enjoyed Rose’s setting and plot line above Sephone’s.
While Rose is a superb character, I’ve always favored the series’ tough girl, Sephone. Sephone and Rose’s interactions bring out the proper balance between too sweet and too cynical—often with hilarious results (esp. The weird/leaving/goodbye combo). Sephone’s snarkiness to Rose’s innocence, or Sephone’s guardedness to Rose’s openness, makes for delightful reading in this third outing.
The settings in this series are some of the best I’ve ever seen. Haunted asylums, and funeral parlor ice cream shops populated the last two. In Tempest Teaser, we have a macabre waxwork museum. Not since Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes, or Morgenstern’s The Night Circus has someone come up with such a creative environment. And the setting is never window dressing; it has a purpose. One you’ll never see coming!
And the writing! Humor and horror sit side by side, sometimes within the same sentence. From an irritated teleporting carrier pigeon to a sadistic guard that loves to knit to a character who has to use her “womanly wiles”—something she’s never even heard of before—to acquire a magic elixir, the jokes and creativity never stops. Special kudos to the answer the door bit, Sephone’s sign off to Rose after calling her weird bit, and the bit on bits! And just when you think the book doesn’t have a dark side, the characters shrink and…well, that’s all I’ll tell you.
Threes are always hard. Sometimes the series loses its way by the third outing, sometimes they get repetitive. The third in the Stormwatch Diaries (not a trilogy) does neither. Introducing a fresh voice, advancing the overarching narrative, and describing yet more of this fascinating world, Legend of the Tempest Teaser ups the stakes. And by “ups the stakes,” the novel does this literally and figuratively, too. Seriously, nothing will be the same after the events in this book.
Does this third entry live up to the first two? Yes. Is this worth reading if I’m older than a middle grader or young adult? Yes. If, after waiting for a few years, does this book live up to its hype and cliffhanger? Yes! Send your teleporting carrier pigeon out right now and have it pick up a Legend of the Tempest Teaser from a bookstore near you. You’ll be happy you did.