(Hey! I'm back! Once I finished with that pesky Moot Court stuff I had time to read again!)
I read the prequel to this book, A Great and Terrible Beauty, over a year ago, and I bought this one not long after. But I wasn’t really crazy about the first book so I put off reading this one until just a few weeks ago. I was rather surprised to discover that I liked this one much more!
These books center around the life of sixteen (then later seventeen) year old Gemma Doyle around 1895. Gemma grew up in India with her British parents, but after her mother died a mysterious death she and her family moved back to England and Gemma was enrolled in Spence Academy for Young Girls. It is at Spence that Gemma starts having mysterious visions and learns about a group of women sorceresses called The Order. The background information is all set up in the first book, so maybe that’s why I felt it was dry. By the second book Bray was really able to delve into the secrets of The Order and The Realms (a magical world that only members of The Order are able to access).
There are a lot of things about Gemma that annoyed me at first--mainly that she has an uncanny ability to trust the wrong people. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that is probably very true to life. A young girl without a mother who suddenly finds herself possessing magical powers and being hailed as the next High Priestess would probably be a little confused. Moreover, she is so young and faces so many tough choices and responsibilities that she was probably overwhelmed!
By the way, I should mention that these are YA (young adult) books, but I don’t really care. I AM STILL YOUNG ENOUGH TO READ YA WITHOUT SHAME, DAMN IT.
Anyway, if you like books that have magic and stuff you might like this series.
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