Mary Jennifer Payne’s Solomon's Ring is a thrilling blend of fantasy and adventure that explores themes of identity, family, and the struggle between good and evil. As the second installment in the Daughters of Light series, this novel continues the story of Eden’s quest to protect the world from dark forces while grappling with her own mysterious powers and heritage.

Solomon's Ring picks up where the first book in the series, Since You’ve Been Gone, left off. Eden Sarson, a teenage girl with the extraordinary ability to sense and manipulate energy, is once again thrust into a world of danger and intrigue. Eden’s journey is complicated by the discovery of her true lineage: she is a Daughter of Light, part of an ancient line of women tasked with defending the world against malevolent forces.

The story revolves around Eden’s quest to find and secure Solomon’s Ring, a powerful artifact with the ability to control demons and dark spirits. Alongside her best friend, Veronica, and a new ally, Ben, Eden must navigate a series of perilous challenges, including demonic attacks, ancient curses, and the ever-present threat of betrayal.

As Eden delves deeper into the mystery of the ring and her own powers, she uncovers startling truths about her family and the forces that seek to use her abilities for their own ends. The stakes are high, and Eden must decide whom she can trust as she races against time to prevent the ring from falling into the wrong hands.

Solomon's Ring explores several key themes, including the search for identity, the importance of friendship and loyalty, and the battle between light and darkness. Eden’s journey is as much about discovering who she is and where she comes from as it is about protecting the world from supernatural threats.

The novel also delves into the theme of choice and the moral complexities of wielding power. Eden is constantly faced with decisions that challenge her sense of right and wrong, forcing her to confront the darker aspects of her abilities and the consequences of her actions.

Family plays a central role in the story as well. Eden’s relationships with her mother, her estranged father, and her newfound allies are tested as she learns more about her heritage and the responsibilities that come with it. The novel highlights the strength that comes from these bonds, as well as the pain that can accompany them.

Mary Jennifer Payne’s writing is fast-paced and engaging, perfectly suited to the young adult audience. She skillfully balances action, suspense, and emotional depth, making Solomon's Ring a compelling read from start to finish. The narrative is filled with vivid descriptions of the supernatural elements and settings, which help to create a rich, immersive world.

Payne’s dialogue is natural and often infused with humor, particularly in the interactions between Eden and her friends. This lightness provides a counterbalance to the darker themes of the novel, keeping the tone accessible and relatable for younger readers.

The pacing of the novel is brisk, with just enough twists and turns to keep readers hooked without overwhelming them. Payne is adept at building tension, particularly in the novel’s action scenes, which are well-choreographed and thrilling.

Eden Sarson is a strong and relatable protagonist. Her journey of self-discovery and growth is central to the novel, and Payne does a commendable job of portraying her internal struggles and external challenges. Eden’s bravery, compassion, and determination make her a character that readers can root for, even as she grapples with the weight of her responsibilities.

The supporting characters, particularly Veronica and Ben, are also well-developed. Veronica’s loyalty and wit provide a perfect foil to Eden’s more serious nature, while Ben’s mysterious past and his growing bond with Eden add depth to the story. The relationships between these characters are a highlight of the novel, showcasing the importance of friendship and trust in the face of overwhelming odds.

The antagonists in Solomon's Ring are suitably menacing, with motives that add layers of complexity to the narrative. Payne avoids one-dimensional villains, instead presenting characters with their own twisted logic and goals, which makes the conflict more engaging and the stakes feel real.

Solomon's Ring is an exciting and satisfying continuation of the Daughters of Light series. Mary Jennifer Payne has crafted a story that combines the thrill of supernatural adventure with the emotional depth of a coming-of-age tale. With its strong characters, intriguing plot, and exploration of timeless themes, the novel is sure to resonate with fans of young adult fantasy.

For readers who enjoy stories of magic, mystery, and self-discovery, Solomon's Ring offers a captivating journey into a world where the battle between light and darkness is fought not only in the external world but within the hearts of its characters. It’s a novel that will leave readers eager to see where Eden’s path will lead her next.

I honestly have a high expectation reading Solomon's Ring after reading the first book of the series. I would say this second book was good. I like how the stories go on with global warming wherein the reality we do face that problem and then to the political arena. There are so many aspects in this book that makes me enjoy reading although somewhere in this book makes me felt a little boring, however, I still like Solomon's Ring. Maybe not as much as I like the first book but it was a wonderful journey reading.

Mary Jane Payne, sets her future YA fantasy trilogy Daughters of Light in Toronto her native city. Solomon's Ring is the second book in the trilogy in which the teen seers who combat demons come up against a fascistic mayor of Toronto. All their efforts to protect Toronto from the demons and the mayor are going down to defeat. How can they get out ahead of the mayor and the demons?

Climate change, climate change, climate change. If you think this isn’t relevant, THINK AGAIN. It’s amazing the imagery and descriptions Mary Jennifer Payne puts in this book, it’s all so vivd. It’s a great way to teach the younger audiences of this book about climate change, and what could happen – well, MAY happen, if we really did live among demons. A bit unbelievable, right? What’s not unbelievable is the fact that we’re facing climate change that has resulted in the melting of the polar ice caps and less drinkable water shortages. Lack of energy and food is a major sticking point in Solomon’s Ring, and it’s only a matter of time before this may become a slow reality of us. The only way to change this is to make kid’s aware of what’s going on around them, because they are our future, and Solomon’s Ring is a book that will introduce the harsh realities in a fantasy setting.

This is a light, easy read for YA readers who will enjoy a quick book that’s meaningful and deals with current events. The climate-fantasy element is a relatively new angle for a book (at least for me), and I think that Mary Jennifer Payne really wrote about this topic well – I really was taken into a dystopian world that felt like it could be a reality for us one day – minus the demons.

I could not get into this book at all. Maybe if I had read the first book I would have a better opinion of the story. This is not normally my type of book but I have found some books similar to this to be really good. I just feel that this particular book lacked something.

This just didn't work for me structurally. To be fair I haven't read the first book so no doubt I'm missing important information. However the plot felt loose so that combined with a relatively slow pace I got a bit lost and then didn't feel invested enough to unravel where I had become lost. I was also a bit uncomfortable with the transexual character depiction because it read a bit nudge nudge wink wink to me - although I acknowledge I m no expert and perhaps trans people would have found it funny. Just not for me I'm afraid.

This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

Erratum:
"Smith flexes a well-toned bicep" Once again YA authors, it's biceps! Unless you do happen to be speaking about only one of the two upper attachments of this muscle: the long head or the short head. I favor the long head myself....

The twin motif in novels, especially young adult novels, has been way overdone, so if you want to venture into it as a writer, you need to offer something truly different or inventive and unfortunately, this novel offered neither. To be perfectly fair, this was volume two in a series, and I have not read volume one, but this seemed like it stood alone fairly well if you were willing to accept that there was baggage from the past that you were not directly party to. But every new relationship is like that, right?!

My problem with it was the writing which felt very amateur. There was nothing technically wrong with it in terms of spelling errors or poor grammar and so on, but it just did not tell the tale well at all, and some of the story seemed so poorly thought-out that it felt like reading indifferent fan fiction.

If you're going to call-up children to do a job that would normally be done by adults, you'd better have a more solid reason for it than simply "Oh she's a special snowflake" and then get all coy about why it's so, and in book two no less. It's just an insult to your reader's intellect, or did you plan on writing only for dumb readers? It's a good question to ask yourself as and author: who are you talking to? And do you really want to talk down to them?

The stakes are higher when the story is a fantasy, especially a religious one, because if you're calling on humans to do a job that a god cannot do and angels cannot handle, then you'd better have a good reason for that too! I know the Bible has countless instances of humans being called on to do a job which God can't handle, but that's a sign of really poor fiction, not of a well-written classic. Just to put it out there - that these kids are needed to fight demons - and offer nothing to support that contention is either empty plotting or the cowardice of hiding behind scores of other poor writers who've employed precisely the same blinkered plot.

The twins had been separated (in volume one) one of them being thought dead, but she was just in Hades evidently, although it's not called that here. Here it has a cutesy hipster term that I prefer to forget. Anyway, her sister discovered where she was and rescued her and now they're back together, but demons are walking the Earth! Or at least the town where they live.

There is a curfew and there are power outages, and these two sixteen-year-olds are so dumb that they let themselves get talked into staying out until dark, which is apparently (and for reasons unexplained at least in the part I read) when demons are loose. Why the demons can't walk during the day is unexplained of course because this novel cowers behind trope. You're expected to swallow all these dumb 'rules', like not crossing running water and being allergic to iron, and so on because it's always done that way! Why would an author strive for originality and to up their game when they can take the road most traveled like everyone else does?

The demons are hunting one of the twins because she's your predictable YA special snowflake although no-one, predictably, will tell her why, not even her angelic best friend, predictably named Raphael. This is one of those tedious stories with all kinds of unnecessary secrecy and poor plotting. If a city was in that bad of a shape, the national guard would have been called out, but no! Everything is going along 'normally' despite the dire crisis, the curfew, and the murders in the streets. This made no sense whatsoever.

It made no sense that one of the twins would be armed with a bamboo pole to fight demons. We're told that bullets cannot kill these demons, but this made no sense either given that the demons were occupying frail human bodies. Why would decapitation work? How do you decapitate with a blunt bamboo pole anyway?

Even were I willing to grant all of that, especially given that I'd not read book one, I can't overlook that it made no sense that the police would not find something highly suspicious in a young, rather frail-looking girl magically decapitating an attacker with a bamboo pole! It made less sense that they would simply nod their heads and say "Oh, okay!" when told the bamboo pole had disappeared. Police are not dumb. They know a lot more than you do, yet far too many authors treat them like they're clueless clowns. For all the faults that police do have, I can't respect an author who depicts all of them as idiots.

It was at the point where Raphael was being all mysterious and for absolutely no reason whatsoever that I could not stand to read another world of this book. There are people no doubt who will whine that you cannot gauge a book after reading only ten percent of it, but that is an outright lie. A book either does it for you from the off, or it doesn't; it's either smartly-written or it isn't. A novel is with worth reading or it's not, and this one simply was not. Life is far too short to waste it on a book that does not launch for you right from the beginning.

This one seemed dedicated to employing great leaps of faith as a substitute for thoughtful writing and solid plotting, and it relied on so much hand-waving to cover plot holes that I could feel a chill from it. To me, that's a sign that you should whack it with a bamboo pole. Intelligent readers deserves a lot better than this. Other readers deserve what they get.

*thank you to Netgalley and Dundurn Publishers for an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review*

1.5 stars.
After having just finished reading the first book in this series, I was excited to read this one as I absolutely loved the first, (I gave it 4.5 stars!) Unfortunately, this one wasn't anywhere near as good. While it was good to hear more about the characters, I found this to be rather boring in parts. Compared to the first book, where there was a lot going on, nothing really seems to happen in this one. The rest of it was just ok which is where the half star rating comes in. I recommend reading the first and probably leaving it at that.

In this sequel to Finding Jade, demons have crossed the rift into the real world and twin Seers Jade and Jasmine must deal not just with demonic forces but also with Toronto mayor Sandra Smith, who appears hell-bent on sowing fear to justify her protectionist policies. Solomon's Ring ramps up the action and fleshes out the real-world elements only hinted at in Finding Jade. Despite its supernatural elements, the novel feels very much rooted in the real world. 

Toronto is one of the final remaining cities surviving the ravages of climate change. The city has historically been welcoming to refugees from around the world, but a series of violent incidents have given rise to a fear that some of the refugees may actually be climate change terrorists, using Toronto as a platform to advance an environmentalist agenda. In response, Mayor Smith argues for the need to close Toronto's borders and increase domestic security, and institutes policies to increase surveillance of refugees. This should all sound uncomfortably familiar to readers; Solomon's Ring holds up a rather unflattering mirror to things being said and done today.

Solomon's Ring expands slightly on the mythology around the Seers' powers and shows us Seers more confident and comfortable using these powers. The book also begins to show the links between the demon plot and the real world one, as demons play a role in the real world political drama. A magical object has the potential to at least alleviate the real world conflict, and the Seers must go on a quest to return this object to its rightful place. I love that Payne keeps the climate change piece realistic -- regardless of how the villain's plot turns out, some issues like climate change and people needing to leave their homes behind will not be magically resolved.

I also enjoyed seeing the dynamic between Jade and Jasmine develop, and particularly Jade's insecurities about her place in the real world after so many years. Jasmine is selected by the mayor to head her youth task force, and while neither twin really wants to be a tool for the mayor's propaganda, I can understand why not being picked alongside her sister would shake Jade's confidence. I can also understand why Jade chafes against her mother's overprotectiveness, and how afraid she is to confront what she went through in The-Place-in-Between. 

Beyond Jade, however, and to a lesser extent Jasmine, the other Seers aren't well-developed at all. Rather, they're defined mostly by their birth order (older twins are headstrong and younger twins are more thoughtful) but otherwise feel interchangeable, which makes it difficult to care when they're in danger. Worse, the Seers, and in particular Jasmine and the other older twins, make many stupid decisions that put themselves in unnecessary danger, only so something big can happen to advance the plot. For example, despite the dangers of a new type of demon and terrorist attacks, the Seers decide to go out late at night to do extra training or walk around the city to fight bad guys but with no actual strategy in mind or urgency to do so. Still, the energy and excitement as they fight is palpable, and the book is a fairly quick, fun read. 

Solomon's Ring ends on an exciting note and promises readers an exciting Final Battle in the next book.

I haven't read the first but there's a Star of David on the cover of this so I wanted to see how it dealt with Jewishness (spoiler: it doesn't). Therefore judging this book on its own merits alone and not as part of a series.

I honestly don't have anything good to say about this, sorry to say. It's just generally messy--both in terms of a plot line that should have been streamlined, and in terms of its treatment of its characters. Extremely badly handled transgender side character (he's revealed to be trans when he makes a joke about "when I was a young woman" that immediately raised my hackles--I'm not saying no one would ever make that joke because hey, gallows humor, but as a way to introduce a character's transness it doesn't make me feel safe--and then in sequence he is misgendered and deadnamed by a villain, and then MISGENDERED BY THE PROTAGONIST because she is being petty), really surfacey-feeling treatment of the protagonists' ethnicity (they're Spanish-speaking Latinas but as far as I saw the extent of cultural information was that their mother put random Spanish words in her dialogue and came from "South America", country not specified), use of Jewish mythology and Holocaust invocations without including Jewish characters, muddled messages about immigration and climate change. Another book that uses "diversity" as a literal selling point in the marketing plan but in practice just reads kind of unpleasantly towards the marginalized identities it's trying to cash in on.