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The cover makes no illusions to being something other, then something exactly like a Jane Austen novel, with magic in. I like my classic literature ladies like Austen and Bronte, and so I didn't mind at all tripping down down that lane. Even if it's blatantly mimicking them. Apparently I have no loyalties. It's starts off a little Pride and Prejudice, with three single sisters of noble class, with with lower class incomes. The oldest, possessing the intelligence and wit to hold her own with a decadent gentlemen named Mr. Rafferty. The story goes along 3 different story lines, of Ivy, who manages the household of her three sisters, Mother, and mentally unstable Father. Mr. Grayson, a young man fallen on hard times, whose desperately trying to support himself and his sister, and his friend Mr. Rafferty, the wealthy son of a Lord, whose thrives on being idle. And the story begins to drag a bit, Ivy worries, Mr. Grayson gets poorer, and Mr. Rafferty gets idler. Then due to tragic circumstance, Ivy goes off to a bleak and formidable countryside mansion to be a governess. And the narrative switches to only her point of view. And things take a turn for the Jane-Eyre, what with locked rooms, and a gruff uncommunicative Master of the house. And the reader spends a lot of time following Ivy's tale of being confused, and no-one telling her anything, but being darkly cautionary, about everything. Only to, in the end capitulate, and let her have the story. Then the story takes up the 3 narratives again, and it seriously begins to meander and lose focus. It appears once the author had to stop picking story lines from various authors to shape his own, and had to add magic, and spells and supernatural villains, that he lost the ability to move the story along. Things get needlessly complex, or rather, mundane things get a lot of explanation, and we have to read about Misters Rafferty and Grayson and we (or at least I) don't care.... and finally the whole thing shuffles at a anticlimactic end. I know there was supposed to be a woman's lib theme running through this book, that the fellows could turn a spell or two with no public outcry, but if a lady tried it people began building a bonfire, but truly, the topic of inequality was a pretty weak, if almost nonexistent theme. Also...the witches seemed to do things like steal children and strangle folks, while the gentlemen wore rings and some on the seedier sides performed illusions. And except for the part where some gentlemen try to bring about the end of the world....the magicians seemed relatively tame, and you get where the townspeople were coming from with the stake burning theme. I was at five stars at the beginning of the book, and it steadily decreased as the book got less charming and more tedious.

2022-11-14 13:59