I have never been so disappointed with a sequel before. My disappointment resides in the field of "man I wish I never wished for a sequel". I absolutely LOVED Tess of the Road, it's one of my top favorite YA books of all time, and a lot of that is due to the story focusing on Tess and her journey. In the Serpent's Wake has no real central focus and just feels like Hartman wanted to shove in so many different plots that she forgot Tess even existed in this.

I made it 74% where I finally decided after ANOTHER new character was introduced that I just did not care anymore. I normally have no issue following large casts but whatever Hartman did in this, made it feel impossible to follow along. It didn't help that a lot of the characters had two different names. None of the new characters where likable, well maybe Jacomo, but everyone else they where just god awful. I could have absolutely positively done without Aemelia, she was horrendous, and having to spend so much time around her and listen to her ridicule the natives of the island she ruled over was exhausting and frustrating. I was pretty neutral on Lady Marga until we met Aemelia, and realized she was just as horrible because she never spoke against anything Aemelia said, but continued to call her her friend.

What I really hated was how Hartman handled William's return to the story. If you read Tess of the Road, you will know what he did to Tess and their terrible connection. What I wanted in a sequel for this was for it to focus on Tess finding and facing William for what he did to her and the book making that a big central plot since Tess of the Road focused so much on Tess's healing. Instead William came back for about 10% of the book, learned about the baby, and then promptly died. Like are you kidding me? Now don't get me wrong I didn't want them to get back together but I wanted him to be held accountable for what he did to her, (and then maybe die much later), he deserved to suffer for some amount of time, but nope, we just killed him, and said "that's all good now, more random plots".

There are way to many plots in this, and the only plot I wanted to care about was finding the southern Serpent, but it gets completely lost in the thousands of subplots Hartman included in this, and none of the subplots were engaging, they we honestly depressing. The amount of horrible shit happening in this world that she expanded on started to become unbearable, there was slavery, servitude, colonization, removal of religions, there is even a whole chapter on a priest who is raping the girls in a mission school. All of these plots plus so many more pull so far from Tess and her place in the story, that it made this feel like it wasn't an extension of her life, and instead she just happens to be around. Making it to 74% and they still had made no progress towards the Southern Serpent, and honestly I don't think they ever will make it, because apparently a war might be breaking out, so who freakin knows, lets just add another subplot to the already growing list. I think this isn't going to tie up fully at the end, but I just don't have the patient anymore.

Tess of the Road will always be special to me, but this was not it, and I'm so sad it turned out this way.