I was starting to get into this book, set in a unique time and place for fantasy books – the era of the Spanish Inquisition – but as the main character started to “awaken” to a sexy dude with eternal life I realized that I had read something like this before. Oh yeah, this is the same author that wrote Ninth Wing, a groaner that I had somehow finished last year or so.
How did this book get into my backlog? I guess I have to be more careful. But it made me think a little about what I liked about this book. The writer has a great skill with writing prose and pushing the story forward at the right pace. There are few slow points and we get right to the next big event. I was also happy that this isn’t the first in a series, which is so common in fantasy books.
But the magic system was pretty unclear, and I couldn’t help thinking why our hero needed to be afraid when she had so much power at her fingertips. The romance angle was predictable and didn’t seem necessary, and unfortunately many of the characters were pretty shallow and one-dimensional.
But I finished the book, hooray me. Next I am reading A Short Walk Through a Wide World by Douglas Westerbeke.
