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Bray, Libba - Rebel Angels
Tue, Feb. 6th, 2007 10:40 amThis is the second book in a trilogy. I read the first, A Great and Terrible Beauty a while back, and I really don't remember much of it at all.
Brief notes: the present tense still bugs me at times. I think it's because so much fanfic is written in present tense and so much published stuff is written in past that this breaking of boundaries hurts my brain!
After her sort-of victory in the first book, Gemma now has to contend with magic leaking out of the Realms. Kartik shows up again in a less-broody but no-less-handsome fashion, and Gemma gets her first taste of London parties.
I can't tell -- I think this book takes place just a few months after the first book? And the first book takes place in the first few months Gemma is in Spence. It all goes by very fast!
Not much of the plotting was surprising to me; I could predict nearly all the plot twists that happened simply by using the mystery rule of thumb ("If the characters think they have the answer more than 50 pages before the book is over, they are wrong and it will be someone/something else entirely.").
The appearance of Gemma's father and brother felt unexpected, as I completely didn't remember them from the first book, but that could be more my memory and less the book.
Still, there are some wonderfully creepy scenes in the realms, which are thankfully not happy-rainbow-unicorn land, and the narrative drive was good enough to make me look up when the final book in the trilogy was coming out.
Brief notes: the present tense still bugs me at times. I think it's because so much fanfic is written in present tense and so much published stuff is written in past that this breaking of boundaries hurts my brain!
After her sort-of victory in the first book, Gemma now has to contend with magic leaking out of the Realms. Kartik shows up again in a less-broody but no-less-handsome fashion, and Gemma gets her first taste of London parties.
I can't tell -- I think this book takes place just a few months after the first book? And the first book takes place in the first few months Gemma is in Spence. It all goes by very fast!
Not much of the plotting was surprising to me; I could predict nearly all the plot twists that happened simply by using the mystery rule of thumb ("If the characters think they have the answer more than 50 pages before the book is over, they are wrong and it will be someone/something else entirely.").
The appearance of Gemma's father and brother felt unexpected, as I completely didn't remember them from the first book, but that could be more my memory and less the book.
Still, there are some wonderfully creepy scenes in the realms, which are thankfully not happy-rainbow-unicorn land, and the narrative drive was good enough to make me look up when the final book in the trilogy was coming out.