This entire novel is pretty much a parenthetical note to the previous 2 books.

On the plus side- it does give some interesting background. On the other hand- I was looking forward to more bout Kim, and even though she was the POV character here, she was mostly peripheral to the action.

Still- it was an exciting and engaging book. I'd recommend it to people who like the Sally Lockhart series; I think this is better, but similar in many ways.

I'm going to continue to read this series... but i'm a sucker for tiny weird countries in Europe (aka "The Mouse that Roared"). ( )

I would have liked this book a lot more if it hadn't been the last book in the trilogy [ETA, 12/1/12: apparently Sherwood plans to continue the series so read these ponderings in that light...]. As an intermediate book in a series, this is a lot of fun. My issues with it have more to do with the expectations set up in the prior books which are not ultimately addressed. That seems to be a thing Sherwood Smith is prone to, given it happened repeatedly in the trilogy. (I haven't read any of her other series to cross-check that, however.) The remainder of this review assumes you've read all three books. Spoilers, of course.

I adore time travel plots and this is no exception. Sending Kim back in time to rescue Dobrenica works fine, and was foreshadowed by Beka's comments in the last book and Kim's time slip in the Austrian countryside in the first book. (Was she really all the way there? Well, she never found her suitcase and she could drink the water...) In this case, however, Kim travels back only in spirit, which turns out to be a clever choice on Xanpia's part to protect her from aging in the Nasdrafus. I wondered about it because I knew Kim COULD return in body, but I was very satisfied with the answer at the end.

Kim spends the book guiding Aurelie around and coming very close to making a mess of it. ("How would you like to marry a prince?" is NOT a great inducement in the early 19th century. Given Kim's own ambiguity about the public relations duties she'll take on when she marries Alec, I was a little surprised she even tried to sell Aurelie on that!) I don't have a whole lot to say about Kim and Aurelie's adventures, but my attention never drifted and I had fun. Sometimes it ran a little longer than strictly necessary, but I am of the school of reading that feels more book means more pleasure, so no complaints.

It was the end of the book that left me feeling a little cheated. The second book, "Blood Spirits," ended with an heartfelt plea from Ruli for Kim to help her walk out in the sun to die if she became a monster. That seemed to me to be the absolute emotional core of that book, that and Ruli's desire for "the peace that passeth all understanding." [*] These things went virtually unaddressed in "Revenant Eve." We do see Ruli, and she's doing well and clearly not a monster, so it's a non-issue, except that Ruli makes Kim affirm her pledge. But if there are no more books after this one, and it seems there will not be, then the end of "Blood Spirits" is devalued.

The issues with the mines and the Consortium are also left mostly unaddressed. Alec begins the book by saying she'll be gathering information about the mines, but this never went anywhere. And if this is the end of the series, it's not going to go anywhere. I find that frustrating, but not as frustrating as the lack of closure for the Ruli storyline.


Conclusions: This has been a review of a book that's been mostly not about the book. It's about the book I expected to see, given the previous two stories. Is that fair? I have no idea. I can only tell you how I felt about things after I finished reading.

[*] A side point left over from "Blood Spirits": The King James Bible quote is actually, "And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus." I thought it was interesting that Sherwood Smith dropped the "of God" in the original quote, despite bringing god up so explicitly throughout the story. I'm not surprised "through Christ Jesus" was dropped, because Dobreni services seem to tend toward the ecumenical, which no doubt makes sense for a fictional country where so many religious traditions have to coexist. I'm an agnostic leaning atheist, but I do think if you're going to bring the subject of god into the conversation, you should go for broke and say what you mean! ( )

Kim is deeply involved in wedding plans to Alex, the soon-to-be-Crown-Prince of Dobrenica when she is sent on a mission to save Dobrenica. Sent into the past as a duppy, she is bound to Alex's ancestor Aurelie de Mascarenhas from the age of twelve. Aurelie leaves Jamaica for her mother's relatives in England, then finds herself in France, at Napoleon's court, with Kim accompanying her all the while. Kim is helpless to affect events, hoping against hope that she can get Aurelie to Dobrenica to marry the Crown Prince on schedule. But who--or what--are the mysterious seraphs that Kim keeps seeing, and what role do they play in the danger to Dobrenica?

A bit of a departure from the first two books in the series, more historical fiction than fantasy for most of the book. But interesting and engaging all the same. ( )