I liked this better then the first one. It wasn't great but it was better. It moved a lot faster then the first one. I don't know if that was because the I had grown used to the characters and the world or because there was more action in this book. The first one took me longer to finish because couldn't seem to get into the story. The first sets up the tone for this book. The world is set up in the first book which allows the story to be told faster in the second book. This book is the one that most resemble Edgar Allan Poe's original story but only towards the very end and it was still very different. I think that was my biggest problem with this book. It was a retelling of one of my favorite stories but there was very little of the actually story found in the books. With that said, I didn't love the books but I didn't hate them either.