Teen Tuesday

Star Cursed (The Cahill Witch Chronicles #2) by Jessica Spotswood (Putnam Juvenile hardcover, 18 June 2013).

Star Cursed continues almost immediately after the ending of Born Wicked, so if your memory is as bad as mine, you may want to reread the first book before beginning the second.

Cate Cahill has given in to pressure from the Sisterhood, and has joined them at their headquarters in New London.  She's not at all happy about this, and feels lonely and provincial.  The only student who is sympathetic towards her is her roommate, Rilla.  She's mocked and bullied by Alice, the "leader" of the students. 

Everyone except Sister Cora, the head of the order, seems impatient for Cate's powers as the prophesied Chosen One to manifest.  Cate is pretty sure that it's not going to happen, but she much rather it be her than one of her younger sisters.

Meanwhile, Cate does the expected duties of the Sisterhood:  visiting and providing comfort to the ill, indigent, and imprisoned.  The power of the Brotherhood is growing; even the suspicion of being  a witch is grounds for punishment, and people are disappearing more and more frequency. This book is much more political  than the first, and descriptions of the agonies inflicted, especially against women, by the Brothers are more graphic. 

Spotswood has taken the Seventeenth Century persecution of witches to an extreme in this gripping, read-in-one-sitting novel, but even more chilling are the parallels that can be drawn to today's attempts to wrest power from women.


FTC Full Disclosure:  Many thanks to  the Publisher for the e-galley of the book.

Spin-offs and Sequels

Today is the 200th anniversary of the publication of Pride and Prejudice.  I'm participating in a blog hop co-hosted by Alyssa Goodnight and Stiletto Storytime by sharing my favorite sequels, spin-offs, and homages to my favorite novel. (Clicking on the titles will link to my reviews.)

In the comments, please share some of yours.

Prada and Prejudice by Mandy Hubbard. 

To impress the popular girls on a high school trip to London, klutzy Callie buys real Prada heels. But trying them on, she trips...conks her head...and wakes up in the year 1815!
There Callie meets Emily, who takes her in, mistaking her for a long-lost friend. As she spends time with Emily's family, Callie warms to them - particularly to Emily's cousin Alex, a hottie and a duke, if a tad arrogant.
But can Callie save Emily from a dire engagement, and win Alex's heart, before her time in the past is up?


Death Comes to Pemberley by P.D. James.

In their six years of marriage, Elizabeth and Darcy have forged a peaceful, happy life for their family at Pemberley, Darcy’s impressive estate. Her father is a regular visitor; her sister Jane and her husband, Bingley, live nearby; the marriage prospects for Darcy’s sister, Georgiana, are favorable. And preparations for their annual autumn ball are proceeding apace.
But on the eve of the ball, chaos descends. Lydia Wickham, Elizabeth’s disgraced sister who, with her husband, has been barred from the estate, arrives in a hysterical state—shrieking that Wickham has been murdered.  Plunged into frightening mystery and a lurid murder trial, the lives of Pemberley’s owners and servants alike may never be the same.


Pride, Prejudice and Jasmin Field by Melissa Nathan.

It starts as a lark for Jasmin Field, the charming, acerbically witty columnist for a national women's magazine.  She joins a host of celebraties gathering in London to audition for the season's most dazzling charity event:  a one-night only stage production of Jane Austen's immortal Pride and Prejudice, directed by and starring the Academy Award-winning Hollywood heartthrob Harry Noble.
And nobody is more surprised than Jasmin herself when she lands the role of Elizabeth Bennet.  But things start to go very wrong very quickly.  Ms. Field's delicious contempt for the arrogant, overbearing Harry Noble goes from being wicked fun to infuriating.
Her brief moment of theatrical glory looks as if it's going to be overshadowed by the betrayal of her best friend, the disintegration of her family and the implosion of her career. And suddenly she can't remember a single one of her lines.  But, worst of all, Harry Noble -- who, incidentally, looks amazing in tight breeches -- has started to stare hard at Jazz with that sort of a glimmer in his eyes...


Love, Lies and Lizzie by Rosie Rushton.

What would happen if Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice was set in the twenty-first century?
When Mrs Bennet inherits enough money to move to the kind of village she has always dreamed of, her daughters find themselves swept up in a glamourous life of partying and countryside pursuits.
But Lizzie and her sisters soon discover that, beneath the very smart surface, lurks a web of intrigue and rivalries . . .

Backwards in Time...

Shadow of Night (All Souls Trilogy #2) by Deborah Harkness.

One of the downsides of reading the first book of a planned series is waiting the many, slowly-passing months (sometimes years) until the second book is released.  Anxious fans of Diana and Matthew de Clermont are finally able to learn what happens after the cliffhanger ending of A Discovery of Witches.

Shadow of Night picks up immediately after the newlyweds time-jump back to Sixteenth Century England.  The purpose of their return is to find Ashmole 782, the magical manuscript that slipped out of Diana's hands in the 21st Century, as well as to find someone to to train Diana in witchcraft.  The reader might expect thoroughly modern Diana to have more trouble adjusting to the relatively primitive lifestyle, but she seems to have few problems.  And as a historian, Diana is in heaven, delving into the study of alchemy and revelling in experiencing what she'd previously (later?) only read about.

Both Diana and Matthew intellectually understand the necessity of not changing history through their actions, but they find it difficult not to apply their modern sensibilities to Elizabethan life. As Matthew already existed in the earlier time, he already has a home, a job, and contacts, making slipping in somewhat easier than it would be otherwise, although some of his sharp-eyed associates do note some behavioral inconsistencies.

 Both characters are more fully developed here than in the previous installment, and gone is Diana's emotional similarity to the lovesick Bella Swan.  The Elizabethan Diana, despite being in an unfamiliar environment and more dependent on her husband for behavioral guidance, seems more self-assured and less inclined to put up with Matthew's autocractic ways and secrecy.

Deborah Harkness

An interesting way of reminding the reader that the couple does not belong in the 16th Century is including chapters that describe what their families are doing in their present.  There are many, many characters in each of the places where the Roydons (as they are known in the past) visit in search of Ashmole 782, and luckily Harkness includes an appendix with lists of characters separated by time/location, though it may have served better at the beginning of the book.

It's fun to hang out with Matthew's cadre of famous 16th Century friends and acquaintances, and the experience of hunting for the manuscript is interesting enough that finding it doesn't feel as urgent as it did in the last book. It is necessary to have read A Discovery of Witches in order to understand Shadow of Night, but the second is a more interesting story.   This one is definitely a book to be read and digested slowly.




*FTC Full Disclosure: Many thanks to the publisher, who sent me a copy of the book for review purposes.