I have just finished reading this book, written by my friend Charlotte who has moved to the Netherlands. It is the first of a series of fantasy novels and she is already working on number three in the series, as well as a new series and writing as part of an author group. She is e-publishing the books and this is one of the reasons I felt I should get a kindle (as well as all the free classic books available, of course.) Although this is not a genre that I have much experience of, I found it to be a pacy, well written and engrossing story. There are two heroines, both of whom I really liked and their stories are told in parallel, following one, then the other. Charlotte has followed in the great tradition of classic writers by moving between the stories and leaving the characters so that the reader is desperate to know what happens next. She has created an amazing other-world with various regions and layers to it, peopled by various groups, which she describes with clarity and conjures up the sense of actually being there. I am just going to have to read the next books in the series to find out what happens next. (I have also read a preview of the first book in the new series and that is really interesting too.) Thank you Charlotte, for encouraging me to move tentatively and painlessly into a different genre of reading!
The image above is from Charlotte's blog site:
http://www.charlotteenglish.com/2012/02/03/why-im-tired-of-advice/ which is well worth a visit if you are the least bit interested in writing or reading.
