It is the 1895 Christmas holidays and one young lady in particular is looking forward to getting away from school and spending time with friends and family in London. But it’s not all beaux and balls. She is being plagued by increasingly violent visions of three young school girls-victims of violent magic. Soon she and her friends return to the magical realms, where they meet up with the spirit of a recently deceased friend and are soon frolicking amongst the magic.
However something is not quite right. It soon becomes apparent that her earlier attempt to rebalance the magic hasn’t worked and now it has become wild and destructive and it is up to her to bind it before a greater evil does. Finding and defeating that greater evil proves a harder task than she ever imagined but in the end she manages in the process changing her outlook on life forever.
This is the second book in a trilogy and sadly suffers from a common problem of the form-sagging middle. There is quite a lot happening in this book, not only is the main plot progressing and deepening but a number of secondary plots are playing out as well. Yet for all that this book was slowwww. Very little seemed to be happening most of the time and twists were visible well in advance.
The anachronistic dialogue remains, and though I’ve come to accept that, the behaviour of the heroine and her friends was inconsistent for girls of their time and class and that grated a little. Having said that I am not the target audience for these books and I’m sure teen readers would identify well with the ‘historical’ characters.
Given the quality of the first book I was a little disappointed in this second episode but I’ll reserve judgement until I finish the final instalment.-Lynn
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