It's a little tricky to describe my feelings on this one. There's no one thing I can point to that I didn't like here that I actually did like in the author's other work. I don't know, I guess the best way to describe it is this just didn't have the spark that the first book had. The characters aren't as endearing (including Loup and Pilar), the narrative isn't as engaging, and the globe-trotting feels perfunctory. It's not bad, just...aggressively "meh".