ElizaBeth Gilligan (1962–2017)

Just as enthralling as the first, though I think I detected a rather large change in Luciana's character. It was something I worried about from the start and finding that the greater part of the book wasn't written from her perspective as the first one had—any time that happens, the author risks losing part of what made the character what she was. While it happened, I'm not sure it would be readily detected unless the reader was actively looking for it.

Another complaint is the large amount of typographical errors: both books had them, but there were more in this book that made for more difficult reading. The grammar and sentence structure were cleaned up more, though, so that was a plus.

I have to confess that in spite of these things, I'm thrilled for the conclusion of the series, not as much to have it end as to finally have a definitive answer for the Rom characters. The trilogy, presumably, is going to take place over the span of somewhere around a year; by the end of this book, there are six months left, which seems to be about the correct amount of time for the resolution of everything that has gone wrong for the characters, or at least the amount of loose ends that need to be tied up.

Something that I'm coming to appreciate more and more is that the characters are easy to relate to: in writing, a compelling plot is one thing, but relate-able characters are another thing altogether and add so much emotional impact to the story. Gilligan manages her characters well, so that though the plot is a common one used particularly in court intrigue fantasy [the story of revenge], the characters are appealing enough to encourage the reader to completely escape in the story.… (mehr)

I found this book absolutely fantastic. The subject material was quite interesting—i love a good story about the Roma—and the plot was intriguing. The book left on a cliffhanger that was satisfying enough for an ending but made it so that it would be extremely difficult to not pick up the next book.

The two elements I particularly loved were the clothing descriptions (my favorite part of reading court-intrigue novels!) and the fight scenes. Coming from a fencing background, I was gratified to be able to picture the scenes in my head and find that they were plausible.

The only unfortunate thing is the awkward wording in some passages—the kind of thing where it has to be read more than once to fully pick up on the meaning. It seems that the author writes close to the way she speaks, so sometimes the syntax doesn't "translate" well into text.… (mehr)