sharon shinn has such great ideas. i keep getting sucked in by her concepts, it’s just too bad that her actual storytelling leaves me a bit cold.

in this case, her descriptions and worldbuilding had a lot of strange anachronisms. the setting is fantasy, but the children had full-on birthday parties and went to a little two-room schoolhouse. and there was a bicycle at one point as well. it was sort of like she was trying to construct a nineteenth century fantasy. the only problem was that there was a king and magic and it all just read kind of incongruous.

and in what i’m beginning to believe is typical of ms. shinn’s style, the story wrapped up too damn fast. we’re trucking along and she ends the thing in the last ten pages. wtf.

i was looking forward to reading the other two books in the series, but now i think they’re moving to the back burner for the time being. sadly, i may have had a better opinion of this book had i not just come off the triumph of reading the ‘protector of the small’ series.