The first 200 pages are definitely more a novel of manners than the high suspense and adventure the rest of the book turns into. If you can get past the first quarter, the book is immensely rewarding. Besides being entertaining and laugh-out-loud funny in places, it really makes you think about reality and history and magic in a different way :) Well worth slogging through! I wish she’d tightened the first bit though!

JK Rowling meets Jane Austen. A lovely fantasy set in an alternate Regency period, this book is not a fast read by anybody’s count (and I am usually a very fast reader), but it’s well worth the effort as the author spins a charming tale which affords a tantalizing glimpse into the whimsical, frightening world of Faerie amongst the drawing-room humor. As the story moves deeper into the magic, the tone becomes darker, drawing the hero into an otherworldly quest of sorts. The scholarship is thorough but unobtrusive. A challenging but ultimately satisfying read!

I think this book really needs to be read to oneself (silently) the footnotes were a distraction & provided more detail than I really wanted.

I ended up getting the book on tape from the library.

I stopped following at some point, & just heard the friendly voice reading & occasionally tracked that the story was progressing.

I think it coulda been shorter & maybe /more/ effective??

I love this book. Great story and the footnotes are entertaining. However it’s a book which people will either love to bits or absolutely hate.

Thanks for the recommendation, can’t wait to begin. I just purchased this from Audible.com. Is it really 32 hours long?

he’s reading it aloud to me, chapter by chapter…

This book has a mixture of alternate history, fantasy, romance, and action all rolled into one book. The characters are well developed, and the author has done a wonderful job recreating the battle against Napolean using magic as the main source of defense. I highly recommend this creative & very original novel…it is unlike anything I have read before.

I thought this was a great book. I loved the footnotes. I loved the characterization, and the dialog.

On paper, this looked like something I should like. A book about magic, a book set in the Regency period, a book that seemed erudite and intelligently written. And I liked the fact that the author took her time over it – ten years.

But, unfortunately, it didn’t do it for me. It was ok. The best bit for me by far are the footnotes, otherwise I thought the main story rather dry. I put the book done halfway through and it took me a while to pick it up again. It didn’t carry me away, nor did I find the world it created completely believable, and for a fantasy novel, those two things mean that I wouldn’t recommend it.