I have extremely mixed feelings about this book.
It's well written with interesting characters and a good
plot. It did deserve to be published, don't get me wrong. It's also well
edited, clean, has a great cover.
It should be a good book. The problem is that I could not
get past Ms. Williams' abuse of mythology. She seems to have a great
understanding of ceremonial magic...but...
She casually uses the word "ka" (which is part of
somebody's soul and stays linked to their body) to remove something completely
differently. She refers to the Norse god Loki, who is technically a Jotun, as
"the disir" - a word which is feminine and plural - and worse, she
later translates the same term as "Ladies." I know Loki has been
known to shapeshift, but... She's also using an existing mythology term to
refer to something completely different.
If you don't know or don't care, you'll probably thoroughly
enjoy this book- nice pacing and some intriguing ideas. If you do know and do
care, then it's a stumbling block - and this is from somebody who's a Marvel
fan. I don't mind a bit of myth abuse. I'm not that finicky, but for some
reason, this book just hit me in several wrong places.
Disappointing. I blame the author entirely - she apparently
runs a magic shop in England, so it's entirely reasonable that her editor
assumed she knows what she's talking about. Maybe she does and the changes were
poetic license that didn't quite work? I don't know, but I do know it made the
book hard to read for me. Again, others may not be bothered by it at all.
Two and a half stars.
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