I really wanted to love this. Like LOVE LOVE it. Jane Austen with magic? COME ON. And I enjoyed reading it, I suppose. Hell, I read it in a day. But my biggest problem with it? It didn’t give me any FEELS. I want the feels, I NEED THE FEELS. Jane Ellsworth is a single woman in Regency England, and though she’s only 28 (A BABY), she’s considered a spinster and has all but given up on ever finding love or a husband. Her younger […]
Imitation can be Fun, But it’s Rarely Art
Jane Austin has a number of imitators but rarely do any of those imitators come close to capturing what truly makes her works stand the test of time. I’m sorry to say that Shades of Milk and Honey doesn’t capture that magic either. This isn’t to say that it’s a bad book, it’s an enjoyable read, but I don’t think it’s a great book either. Rather it’s an imitation of a masterpiece, fine to look at but nothing memorable. Kowal does attempt to imbue something […]
Jane Austen meets light fantasy, with some significant flaws.
On the one hand, yes, this was fun because Jane Austen + magic = yes. If you go into the book expecting Jane Austen levels of wit and social satire, you are going to be disappointed. But I didn’t. I went in expecting a fantasy novel set in an Austen-like world with an Austen-like romance plot, and so I was fine. And the magic system was really interesting to me. So basically, this is Regency England if magic were real, and largely considered another art, […]
That time Mary Robinette Kowal liked me on Goodreads.
I spent last year on a Mary Robinette Kowal bender with her Glamourist Histories series, and have spent all of 2015 waiting VERY IMPATIENTLY for the last book to come out this spring. Very impatiently. So when my library system *finally* ordered its copies, I greedily placed my hold and then waited AGAIN until I got my copy. And then of course, an enormous stack with earlier due dates, as well as my graduation, put that reading on hold again. With all this anticipation, this […]