Damiano's Lute is book two in the Damiano trilogy and begins with him and his young companion, Gaspare, who has become Damiano's self appointed manager, travelling in a ricketty cart to France to find Gaspare's sister. She is a prostitute and Gaspare continually denigrates her, but also loves her as she is his only surviving family member.

Since renouncing his powers at the end of book 1, when he returned Saara's powers to her and also gave her his own, Damiano has become even more self-absorbed, living only for his lute playing. He and Gaspare continually rub each other up the wrong way. When Saara follows to try to restore his powers to him - and also demonstrate her feelings for Damiano physically - he recoils in horror. Only later does he realise he needs his powers back to find Gaspare's sister who was supposed to meet them in Avignon, currently the home of the Papacy, but failed to make the rendevous.

Meanwhile, the two boys become involved on the periphery of Papal politics, though that doesn't really come to much plotwise. And Damiano continues to be bothered by the devil, with whom he made a bargain to keep his hometown safe in book 1. In trying to defend him, his mentor and friend, the archangel Rafael, seems to be diminished.

After Damiano finally changes his mind about both his powers and Saara, positive developments at last seem to be on the horizon, but the situation in Avignon rapidly changes with devastating results.

As with book 1, the prose is beautifully written. However, the characters failed to engage. Despite the odd bit of humour with Damiano's temperamental horse, the loss of his talking dog from the first book was felt, together with the sheer unlikability of Gaspare who plays a large part in the story. And I found the final section completely unconvincing as Damiano switches from being self absorbed, dreamy and ineffectual most of the time, to being a self-sacrificing hero - to save someone who is peripheral to his life and who has hardly appeared in either volume of the trilogy so far. If it had been Saara, it would perhaps have made sense - but given her witch nature, she would never have been in the danger described. So despite it being obvious that the final section is meant to be heartbreakingly sad, I'm afraid it left me unmoved. I also found it odd to kill off the main character at the end of book 2 of the trilogy. Given this major reservation, the story could only merit 2 stars from me. ( )

While the book is beautifully written, the Kindle version is less than perfectly transcribed, causing me to struggle with the text. Still I enjoyed it quite a lot, although there were spots when I needed a tissue. I am glad I had Raphael, the third book in the trilogy, ready to go.

What I liked was the exploration of love and personal responsibility. There are hard choices to be made and they have significant consequences. I am impatient to find out how this trilogy concludes.

If you enjoy philosophical fantasy, this could be your cup of tea. Do start at the beginning of the series as you need that background to understand this book. ( )

Decent, but not memorable. ( )

Second of series - unique fantasy story. ( )

The second of the trilogy, Damiano has given his magic to Saara and he is now trying to exist without it, but it comes back to haunt him. ( )