A Lone City Novella - Garnet's Story by Amy Ewing

Garnet's story came out after the first two books in the Lone City Trilogy, and follows in the trend for teenage fiction, of giving us a novella from a different character's point of view.  This follows the same time period as the first book in the series 'The Jewel' so it doesn't particularly move the story forward any, but it does give us a lot more insight into Garnet, son of the House of the Lake.

We don't see much of Violet in the book, which I'll admit suits me as, as is often the case, I find the main character the least interesting.

Turns out that Garnet's motives were more self-centred than I had originally assumed, but for all that I found that I liked him more for it. Garnet is one of the more interesting characters in the series anyway, so finding out that he wasn't just an idealistic teen was quite a nice change. It also turns out that almost every assumption I'd made about why he did things was wrong, which I like, it's nice to be wrong and not always know what's going to happen.

This novella also gives us a bit more information about Garnet's relationship with his wife to be, Coral, who I had pretty much forgotten about, so that was interesting as well. I think I'd like to head the second and third books for Garnet's point of view as well, he and Raven are (for me) the most interesting characters and anything from their Point of View gives a very different look at things.

This novella is more coherent than the one based around Raven, because of what that was about it was very easy for that to become disjointed as she did, for a time, become quite an unreliable narrator, you don't have that problem with Garnet.

I am really enjoying this series and am currently half way through the final book in the series, so chances are I'll be talking about that one in the next few weeks as well.

Things I Want my Daughter to Know - Elizabeth Noble

You can summarise the plot of this quite quickly. How a family deals with the loss of their mother. Barbara dies leaving her four daughters, Lisa, Jennifer, Amanda and Hannah to manage without her. Each daughter has her own issues to deal with, and has only her sisters, her(step) father and her mother's letters to help her through. Knowing that she is dying Barbara has written letters for her daughters, that she hopes will help them in later life.

Lisa is scared of commitment, Jennifer's marriage seems to be falling apart, Amanda is a traveller, unable to settle down anywhere and Hannah is still young, struggling to deal with the loss of her mother and the teenage rebellious years at the same time. Add to this Mark who is trying to help his step daughters and understand his teenage daughters, as well as trying to deal with the loss of his wife and you have quite a simple set up.

This is the second time that I'm saying I struggled to keep two of the characters clear in my head, for some reason I struggled to keep Lisa and Jennifer straight. Amanda and Hannah were very clear characters with their own personalities and issues to deal with. I felt that Lisa and Jennifer could easily have been merged into one character, despite the fact that they're supposedly dealing with very different problems, it all seemed the same to be somehow.

I think I struggled with this book because I struggled to like most of the characters. Hannah was a brat, granted she was a teenager and I'm sure most of us were brats at some point but that's my defining memory of her, she was a brat. Jennifer and Lisa, were also mostly brats, and I struggled to respect the decisions that they made. Amanda I probably liked the most, but even she wasn't exactly a positive character, a woman who runs away when she doesn't know what to do.

I did quite like Mark, the man trying to hold everything together through the loss of his own wife, but even some of his choices and decisions seemed puzzling to me, and I couldn't always respect what he did or why he did it.

I made it to the end of the book, but it took me quite a long time, I kept losing interest and putting the book down, then coming back to it for a while, then getting bored again, before eventually using it as the book I read on my break on lunch at work then taking it on holiday to finish. I think I just didn't warm to the characters and so didn't really care about what happened to them, and I couldn't understand most of the decisions that they made.

The School for Good and Evil - Soman Chainani

I'm going to actually start doing book reviews again, I know that I keep saying this, but I'm going to give it another go. I was on holiday recently, I read actual books, now is the time to try this again.

So, The School for Good and Evil is as it sounds a School where you train to be either a Princess or Princess or the Wicked Witch, or if you don't qualify to that level a side kick or a henchman, every year students turn up excited to learn, already knowing which school they're going to be from and two people come from the forest, kidnapped by the School Master.

For the first half of the book I went through phases of really enjoying it and getting really frustrated with it. Our two protagonists are the Beautiful Sophie and the Ugly Agatha, Sophie wants to be kidnapped because she wants to be a princess and escape her boring normal life, Agatha wants to protect her friend and so ends up getting kidnapped with her, however Sophie ends up in the School for Evil and Agatha ends up in the School for Good. The reason I kept changing my mind about this was because it kept feeling like it was being dealt with n a very black and white way then swapping back again. Black and White as in "you're beautiful, you must be good" and "you're ugly, you must be evil", and every time it started to veer away from that I enjoyed it again, and every time it went back to it I started to get frustrated that it really was going down that route.

Very early on you start to see signs that Agatha is the good one and that Sophie is the evil one, but both girls find it hard to accept, Sophie because she's beautiful and therefore believes that she's good, and Agatha because she's spent all her life being told that she must be evil because of how she looks.

I have to admit that I struggled to like Sophie, in fact I spent quite a lot of time wanting to slap her, mostly because she's a selfish brat, although that is pretty much the point. Within each school with have other characters, of course, we have Tedros, Arthur and Guinevere's son in the school of Good and we have the Sheriff of Nottingham's daughter. I have to admit that I struggled to keep some of the character's straight and to which name went with which character, but I have had that problem a couple of times recently so I'm willing to accept that that might be me rather than the book.

As you get to the final showdown, characters switch sides, page by page, so you never quite know who believes what, so I rushed through the last few chapters in one sitting, and of course I'm not going to tell you how it ends, suffice to say that it's set up the next book nicely and I'm now considering getting the next one to find out what happens next, and I@m still not completely certain whether I'm happy or frustrated by the ending.

The Elite by Keira Cass

I've been saying that I'm going to return to book reviews this year, so this is my first attempt!

 

The Elite by Keira Cass

 

This is slightly difficult to review because it's actually the second one in the trilogy, so I'm trying to talk about it without giving too much away about what happens in the first book, however, due to the fact that it's a trilogy certain things are a given.

 

In the first book (The Selection) we discover that there has been some sort of apocalyptic event which means the world is no longer as we know it, the USA is now Ilea and is living in a caste system. The caste your are born into dictates what your job will be and basically how wealthy you will be. We also discover that the Prince is looking for a wife, and this is basically done through some kind of Big Brother esq competition (The Selection) where one woman from each region goes to the palace and they are slowly eliminated. The woman that we are following is America, unsurprisingly due to this being a trilogy, America is still there at the beginning of the second book.

 

As with pretty much every teen book at the moment, we have the obligatory love triangle. We have America, Aspen (her original love from back home who broke up with her during the first book, turned up as a guard at the palace and has been confusing her ever since) and of course the Prince, Maxon. I have a major problem with the triangle, in that I can't stand Aspen, I think he's a manipulative dick. However, I haven't read the third book yet, therefore America and Aspen could live happily ever after for all I know, but I will be very disappointed if that's the case. America is very confused, about pretty much everything, she thinks she likes Maxon, and he's made it very clear that he would propose to her, however she's scared of the responsibility that comes with the crown therefore Maxon has agreed to put off asking her to marry him and sending all the other girls home while she acclimatises and works out whether she could as manage as the queen. Aspen, as I have said, broke up with America, he's a lower caste than her and decided that he wasn't good enough for her and dumped her. America, as part of the Selection has agreed that she is a virgin and that during the Selection there will be no other men. Aspen decides to show his love for her by constantly putting her in danger by being the other man that she's now allowed to have (can you tell that I don't like him?).

 

This book covers a lot of aspects without really actually doing much, Ilea has two sets of rebels who are against the Selection, the royals and Privilege in general. The rebels keep attacking the palace, meaning that everyone has to hide in secure rooms while the guards fend them off, but we don't really know what the rebels want, or what they hope their attacks will achieve, hopefully the third book will clear that up because to me, it's one of the most interesting aspects that's currently not being utilised to it's full extent.

 

This is aimed at a teen audience and consequently the writing style is not too taxing. It is however very enjoyable, and I don't remember anything jumping out at me as glaringly stupid or annoying about the writing style. It's easy to drop in and out of this book and it's not too complicated to keep track of what's going on. The only problem I really had (and more so with the Selection than the Elite) is that you're introduced to a lot of female characters at once, and apart from four or five who are kept to the centre I struggled to keep track of who was who.

There are also some lovely secondary characters, America's maids are lovely, and I would really like to see a bit more about them, we've been fed bits and bats of their back story and I hope that this is because it will become relevant in the third book and we'll learn more. Some of the other girls are interesting, some are two dimensional and are purely to serve a purpose, unfortunately this does include one of the main rivals.

 

I'm aware that I've across as a bit negative in this, but I did actually enjoy it. I loved the first book and whistled through it then went and bought the second one which I also enjoyed, but possibly wasn't as gripped as I had been by the first one. Having said that I finished the second one this morning and went straight on to amazon to track down the third one which hasn't been released yet, and the only reason I haven't ordered it is because the kindle edition isn't available to pre-order yet, I will do as soon as it is. It's due to be released early May so late May early June will probably see The One being reviewed.

 

There's a lot of teen fiction around at the moment, it's currently a very popular genre in quite varying styles, success and quality (thanks I suspect to Twilight), and this is good quality compared to a lot of what's around. It is well written, it's an interesting concept (somewhere between Hunger Games and Big Brother) and I don't actually hate the heroine (something quite rare in the current crop). The main issue I have with it is that I can't comprehend any attachment to one corner of the triangle other than familiarity, he puts her down then tells her he loves her (again, far too common at the moment). This is the 'filler' book. The Selection introduces everything and The One (book three) will wrap everything up, all this book has to do is potter along, eliminate another couple of girls and try and instil another danger to keep you interested enough to read the third which will, hopefully, tie everything up. I'm looking forward to the next book and would recommend this, but go back to the beginning and read The Selection first.

Notwishstanding by Louis de Bernieres

I've been reading this for ages, becuase it's all short stories it's something that you can pick up and put down without worrying that you'll forget what's already happened. There is a vague link between the stories and there will be vague references to things that have gone before but not so much so that it'll be a problem if you've forgotten something.

As with anything that's a collection of short stories there are some that are better than others, and there's quite a selection here, some are happy, some are sad and personally, one that really freaked me out, I don't know why exactly but one of the stories really got me and it took me ages to get to sleep after reading it.

The general premise of the book is that it's set in the village of Notwithstanding and basically tells the tales of many of the people that live there, mostly concentrating on their little habits and foibles. Some characters re-appear, albeit briefly, in other characters stories, and others are only ever side characters. Personally I really wanted a story about the mad nuns but they never made it to centre stage, they were always just careering round corners far to fast with little regard to other road users, but I really wanted to hear more about them. 

I did enjoy it, although as I say, some more than others, although, having read it I don't think that I'd bother going back to it to read it again. If you've read anything else by Louis de Bernieres then this might come as a slight surprise to you, if felt very different to anything else that I'd read by him, not quite so lyrical, although that doesn't necessarily make it worse, in fact I found this much easier to read than previous books.

Princess by Jean Sasson

I should possibly say 'ghost written by' Jean Sasson.

I approached this with a mix of feelings because I've recently read Love in a Torn Land also ghost written by Jean Sasson and thought that it was appallingly written. That's possibly unfair, it was an unsuitable writing style for the topic, however, I attempted to put that aside because I'd wanted to read this for quite some time (years) so when I saw it at the library I practically snatched it off the shelf (earning myself some very strange looks, I can tell you).

Princess tells the story or a Saudi Arabian Princess who tells the story of her life and the life of women in Saudi Arabia during her life. It's very well written and I've absolutely flown through this, occasionally reading bits out to Ben, generally when I couldn't believe them and needed him to hear it as well incase I was misunderstanding it. It's a fascinating read and to a Westerners eye, almost impossible to comprehend. It tells tales of women being punished by their father's by being drowned or locked in a darkened room for the rest of their lives, for things that we wouldn't even consider to be a crime, and not only are their father's not punished for this behaviour, they're actually applauded.

But to begin at the beginning, the story is told by 'Sultana', she doesn't reveal her real name, and changes the names of those around her to protect her. It starts with her earliest memories and follows her through to, I would guess, middle age. Sultana was a spoilt brat, and she admits that she was, she writes that she remembers things now and cringes to think that she behaved like that. But, for all that she is a brat, she's quite a likeable brat, she's got sensibilities that a Western woman can understand, and we side with her because we want her to be right and we want her to succeed. Sultana wants equality for the women in Saudi Arabia, and as a reader, so do we.

As is often the case with non-fiction writing, it's quite difficult to review, because this is someone's life, it really did happen to them so you can't really comment on the 'plot' as such. Jean Sasson's voice seems less prevelant in this than it had in the previous book that I had read by her, and that's a good thing. Love in a Torn Land read like a badly written Mills and Boons at time, and while I've got nothing against that, that's not the style you'd really choose to use for a war torn land.

Overal, I really do recommend this book. It states in the reviews on the front pages that everyone should read this book, and I agree with that. I think it's important for us to remember just how lucky we are and how when we complain what an awful day we've had, it's actually not been that bad. As a Princess Sultana also hasn't had the worst life possible, not compared to the poor of Saudi Arabia, but at the same time her life has, in many ways, been much harder than mine, because I can't even begin to imagine what it would be like to live with the restrictions that she has had to endure, simply because she is a woman.

A Weekend with Mr Darcy - Victoria Connelly

I've had quite a constructive evening already, I'm quite proud. I've done my exercise (just got Camilla's Cardiodance Workout, which thus far I'm rahter enjoying), I've submitted my article to Costume Chronicles and finished my book. So it's the book that I'm going to blog about.

A Weekend with Mr Darcy by Victoria Connelly tells the story of Katherine Roberts and Robyn Love, both of who are Jane Austen fanatics attending a Jane Austen conference, and the romances that may or may not happen around them.

To be honest, I don't really like books that use Austen or Darcy or similar to get attention for their book when they don't necessarily need to. Victoria Connelly does better than most, the idea of the Austen conference works well as a background to the 'action' of the novel, even so, I think putting Darcy in the title is cheating a bit.

Katherine and Robyn are both perfectly likeable, as are the majority of the characters, Doris Norris is lovely (really, that's her name), a charming (in my head, little old) lady, although I don't think that you ever actually find out whether she is a little old lady or not.  Mrs Soames is in the model of Austen's matriarchs, although not really given enough time in the foreground to be a Lady Catherine DeBurgh or similar. Dame Pamela Harcourt is another matriarch (with a fabulous butler), although much less imposing and very keen on helping the plot along, although she really only gets involved in the second half. Of course, as we have two heroines and this is Austen inspired we have to have our heroes as well, I'm not really going to say anything about the heroes incase anyone reads this and feels inspired to read the book, because it's difficult to say much about the heroes without giving a lot of the plot away.

Her characters I like, the setting, again, quite liked, didn't feel anywhere near as contrived as I suspected that it was going to however, the plot. It's typical chick lit fair, and I don't really know why I keen reading chick lit because it often irritates me. It's very contrived. There are some crowbar plot points, people asking really stupid and obvious questions 'Who would possibly be able to do this?' So that ten chapters later a character can suddenly go 'I know how to solve this problem', but this is chick lit and we do kinda expect it, so I don't know why I moan.

Anyway, did rather enjoy it, pretty much raced through it, although I found myself skim reading hte last 5 or so chapters, she took a little to long to get to the end and then when she did get to the end stopped rather adruptly. But rather enjoyable, pretty brainless, nice chilled reading.

Nation by Terry Pratchett

Book review, I haven't done one of those for a while.

I've just finished reading Nation by Terry Pratchett, which I read some months after seeing the National Theatre Live version, which I loved by the way.

Nation tells the story of two teenagers thrown together after a storm. Mau is an island boy who returns to who home island to find that he's the only one left, Daphne is a young British girl travelling home whose ship is wrecked by the storm. They don't speak the same language and know nothing about each other.

The book, despite being a Pratchett fan I took a while to warm to, it's a book that I seem to have faded in and out of, I'll enjoy it for a while, then get bored for a while, then back to enjoying it for a while, and so on. It's difficult having seen the live version that I really enjoyed because a character I loved on stage, was nothing like that in the book.

But, the book, opening chapter is very cryptic, you're trying to catch up and work out what's going on, but I think that's intentional, it does grab your interest.

I like Daphne, she's been bought up in a traditional Victorian style way, this is no use to her when she suddenly finds herself shipwrecked. She and Mau eventually learn to communicate, in a roundabout sort of way, and she starts to realise that just because she's been told something is right, doens't necessarily mean that something is.

Eventually more people arrive on the island, building up a bigger character base, giving a bit more interest to the action. The more westerners from the ship that Daphne was travelling on arrive on the island throwing them into chaos.

This book is aimed at children, and handles some pretty big concepts. Mau learns his way around religion and belief, Daphne touches on right and wrong, not just in the simple form of 'it is wrong to lie' but in the form of what is an acceptable form of retaliation when something wrong is done to you. They're big concepts for children to handle, although I actually find them quite interesting. Daphne's morality story more so than Mau's religios story.

As the whole the book was shorter on laughs than I'd expect from Pratchett, but I did enjoy it as a whole.

New Title and 'The Owl Killers' by Karen Maitland

Firstly I've changed the title, I decided that my title didn't really mean anything, granted this one's roughly the same, but it's slightly less ponderous and pretentious (I hope) with it.

I finished reading The Owl Killers by Karen Maitland at some unnatural hour last time and thought it was about time that I wrote another book review. Like her previous book Company of Liars this took a while to get into, but once I had I really enjoyed it. Starting in England in 1321 it tells of a village, and the fight between current superstitions and Christianity. A group of religious women have recently moved from Brussels to bring their religion to the British but rather than taking their hope the village priest takes against them and fights them every step of the way.

The story is told by several people, a daughter of the local lord who he banishes from his home, the leader of the religious women, one of the other women, a child from the village and the village priest. Each chapter titled by whoever will be 'speaking' for that chapter.

The story is very enjoyable, but it does occasionally seem to jump without any real explanation, one chapter will end with the expectation of an event and the next chapter will start after it happens so you occasionally feel like you're missing out on information and events.

The voices of all the different characters are clear, and even without the name at the beginning of each chapter, you could probably tell who was talking, and it's very interesting to see everything happen from different points of view, and despite the fact that personally, I have no interest in religion, it was interesting to see the Lord of the manor's daughter find her own theories about religion and peoples faith.

Overall, I'd recommend this is a borrower, having read it I probably wouldn't read it again, but it was enjoyable to read once.

Me and Mr Darcy by Alexander Potter

Me and Mr Darcy by Alexander Potter tells the story of Emily, a hopeless romantic and Jane Austen fan who opts out of a holiday to Mexico with friends and instead decides to go on holiday to England to visit the land of Jane Austen and go on a literature tour. Here she meets Mr Darcy and romance ensues.

I had high hopes for this book and I have to say that I was incredibly disappointed by it. The original concept was quite original and I thought Ms Potter was going to do something quite interesting with it. She basically retold Pride and Prejudice, but with a lot less class than Austen ever did, and it's such an obvious retelling, there's nothing original in this book. She attempts to make herself seem clever by saying to the reader 'look how silly Emily is, she's making all the same mistakes as Elizabeth in Pride and Prejudice, isn't that foolish of her', but it doesn't make her look clever, it just points out that she hasn't managed to do anything creative with the plot and instead is just retelling someone else's story.
Emily's surrounding cast are Spike, a journalist who also happens to be on the tour, Eddie, a sweet coach driver and of course, Mr Darcy. Very early on Emily hears Spike describing her unfavourably (hmmm, where have I heard this before?) and consequently takes against him, so, it should come as no surprise that when Eddie tells her a heart breaking story of how he was once mistreated by Spike she feels sorry for him and longs to jump to his defence, but has been sworn to secrecy by Eddie, sound familiar? Now, I admit that I will read most forms of complete trash and consequently I could probably forgive most of the horrors of unoriginality if it wasn't for the complete and utter massacre that she makes of Mr Darcy's plot. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not one of those die hard fans who can't stand to have the characters of the original book messed with, but I do resent someone taking a character name and then putting completely different characteristics into that person. I'm sorry, I'm generally quite laid back about books and will, as I've said, read pretty much any trash if I'm in the right room, but I found myself resenting this books depiction of Mr Darcy. Mr Darcy would not spend long periods of time gazing adoringly into the eyes of a woman that he barely knows, neither would he start, rather randomly spouting poetry, it was all a little embarssing if I'm honest, but not, as Ms Potter intended, for the characters, rather it was embarassing for herself.
To be honest it was an odd, and very predictable book, it could have been a very interesting take on an idea, possibly nothing spectacular, but something a bit more original (along the lines of Lost in Austen - check it out if you haven't seen it by the way) but instead it was just uncomfortable, stilted, and I'm sorry Miss Potter, but a little boring, completed with an embarassingly contrived and rather rushed ending.
This said I can't really recommend it, and I definitely have no intention of reading anything else by the author. As a fan of new takes on classics I can cross it off the (rather long) list of things that I'd like to read, but sadly, that's about the best I can say about it.

Dancing with Mr Darcy

Dancing with Mr Darcy is quite difficult to review because it's lots of short stories written by lots of different authors, so while I liked one story, I didn't necessarily like the next.
The principal behind the book was a short story competition, whereby people had to submit stories that were either influenced by the works of Jane Austen or by Chawton House.

As I say, it's difficult to review the book as a whole because there are so many different authors and stories, so I'll pick out a few that stood out for me in one way or another.

Jane Austen over the Styx by VIctoria Owens. This is the story that opens the book, so you need something that's going to keep the reader interesting and encourage them to read the rest of the book. I don't know that I'd label this as the best book in the collection, but I did rather enjoy it. It tells the story of Jane Austen's trial after her death, where her prosecutors are her elderly female characters, I liked the concept of the story and it was quite an enjoyable few pages.

Jayne by Kirsty Mitchell. I have to say that I'm not sure whether all die hard Austen fans will like this one, although I thought it was an interesting take. Taking Jane's view and money and wealth this story follows Jayne as she makes the money to pay her way through her education and what lengths she goes to. Personally I found it one of the most enjoyable stories in the collection, but I think there is a slightly hard edge to it that will put people off, as will Jayne's way of making money.

Tears Fall of Orkney by Nancy Saunders. I'm sorry Ms Saunders, but I couldn't see where you were going with this one. I understand the inspiration and how you came up with the story, but I kept waiting for it to actually start or for something to explain what was going on. It's a tale of unrequited love, but I personally couldnt work out how this character had allowed herself to become so dellusioned in the first place, and consequently found it very frustrating.

Eight Years Later by Elaine Grotefield. To my mind the most 'Austen' story of the collection, a story that Jane would have been proud of, and also, as far as I can remember, the only one written by from a male pont of view. I proper Austen love story, really liked it.

One Character in Search of her Love Story Role by Felicity Cowie. I have rather mixed feelings about this, I loved the concept (really wish I'd thought of it first) but I'm not so sure about the writing style. The premise is that authors do not write characters, characters send reports of what they have been doing to their author, and as such, before they can send reports, they go to 'shadow' other literary characters to learn from them. A fabulous and, to me, very original idea. I had two main problems with this. Felicity Cowie was a little over fond of footnotes, sometimes taking as much as half a page for a foot note which got on my nerves, and I lost interest half way through. The character shadows Jane Bennett which was a lovely and rather touching conversation but when she started to shadow Jane Eyre, I started to lose interest. I don't know why, Jane Eyre is probably one of my favourite books, but I found that I couldnt warm to the Jane that Ms Cowie wrote and couldn't believe that she would speak like that.

I haven't mentioned all the stories in the collection, just a few that stood out to me for whatever reason. Overall if you are an Austen fan then I probably would recommend reading this, if only to see what takes other people have on the characters, ideas and situations that develop from Jane Austen's work

Simply Perfect by Mary Balogh

Simply Perfect by Mary Balogh could possibly be described in one sentence, predicatable regency romance. However, I'll try to go into a little more detail than that.
Firstly, this is the final in a quartet, and I haven't read the first three, however, I don't think I was missing much essential information from the last three books, suffice to say, I suspect that they all ended happily, but, if by any chance you couldn't guess how the other three might have ended, reading this one will, technically give that away. However, if you pick up something like this then you pretty much know how it's going to end anyway.
So, basic plot. Claudia Martin is the head mistress at a girls school in Bath and is planning on going to Bath with two of her charity girls who have been offered work. Her match making friends have sent Joseph Fawcitt to escort her to London. Yeah, you guessed it, two pages max before you figure out how this is going to end. However, there are a few other characters thrown in, mainly to either get in the way of their romance or to try and assist it. Including Joseph's fiance and a man from Claudia's past.
However, this isn't quite as appalling as I'm making it out to be. Yes bits of it are predictable, but not all of it. I'd say that I'm quite cynical when reading romances, but there were actually a couple of twists that I didn't guess (and did kick myself for not getting), one relatively early on and one quite near the end.
Writing wise, Mary Balogh does have the deceny to avoid most of the obvious sexual cliches, which makes a pleasant change, yes, there are a couple of sex scenes, but by the standards of such books they're relatively tasteful, and I don't remember a single mention of a heaving bosom.
Writing in general, pretty good, I did find myself getting quite fond of Claudia, she was well written. She's isn't pathetic and waiting to be rescued, but Balogh also hasn't written a modern woman who just happens to be living in a Regency world. Claudia is confident and capable of looking after herself, but she lives in the right period.
Overall, quite enjoyable, pretty predictable. I probably would leave another couple of her books, they're good fun, trash, romantic reads that you don't have to concentrate on.

The Magician's Guild - Trudi Canavan

Okay, finished reading Trudi Canvan's The Magician's Guild this evening, and have kinda come out with mixed feelings about what I thought. I quite enjoyed it, but I'm not really sure that that can be counted as a review in itself.

So, what happens? Sonea is a 'dwell' (lower classes, when the city is cleared each year they're evicted), when the Magicians are carrying out the clearance one year she throws a stone at the Magicians, and to everyones surprise it breaks their shield and injures a Magician, thus begins a hunt by the guild to find Sonea.

And that's really where my mixed feelings about the book come in, I enjoyed reading it, it was quite interesting and I quite liked Canavan's writing style but you can only read 'they ran away and hid somewhere else' (I'll admit that I'm paraphrasing) before it becomes a bit repetative. To my mind the running away and hiding was dragged out far longer than it needed to be, it could have been done in half the time and then moved onto the next bit of the plot.

This was obviously written with the idea for the full trilogy in mind because it throws up many unanswered questions that presumably will be answered in the next two books. For instance creepy old men hiding in the slums from the Magician's Guild, and what to my mind seemed like undisclosed pasts for half of the characters that obviously need to be discovered throughout the course of the next two books.

One thing that I did find slightly off putting was Canavan's a slight habit of referring about the history between characters as though I should already know about it, as though I'd missed a book out that I should have read first.

As often seems to be the case, I found that I wasn't as interested in Sonea as I was the characters around her. Two Magicians, Dannyl and Rothen, I liked and look forward to reading more about, and a thief from within the slums called Feran. And of course we have a touch of youthful romance to be exanded upon in the next two books and someone who is not what they seem who will have to be exposed throughout the trilogy.

I enjoyed this and I will at some point track down the next two to see what happens and how it ends, but I won't be rushing out to buy them. Having said that I have sinced tracked down a couple of other books by the same author to see what her other trilogies are like. The Magician's Guild was, I think, written for children, so I'm intrigued to see how her writing changes, if at all, for an older audience.