December 14, 2011

Book Review: The Gathering Storm (Katerina Chronicles Vol 1) by Robin Bridges

At First Sight: Katerina Alexandrovna, Duchess of Oldenburg is a debutante in the St. Petersburg Court of 1888, while on the outside she looks like any other rich young woman trying to catch a rich, noble husband, she has a dangerous and dark secret: she's a necromancer.

And, as it turns out, she's surrounded by magic and strange things, plots to control and possibly destroy the Imperial family; and she's in the center of everything, caught between the duty to her country, the wishes of her family and the people trying to expose her secrets.

Second Glance: The Gathering Storm sounded like quite an adventure and I have a particular fondness for all things Russia, but try as I may, I just couldn't like this book.

I can't really go into many details because I don't want to spoil the book for those who do want to read it but I felt like I was dropped in the middle of an already on-going situation, where there hadn't been much of a set up so I could understand, I was then given a lot of useless information but told really little about  what was happening.

Plus, I wasn't sure how serious people were about the whole magic thing and what was simple superstition- like I didn't know the actual standard for the regular people, did they believe or didn't they? it was never quite clear - and I think the involvement of 'real' historical characters - or sketches of them - were in detriment to the story because it just made it That Much Harder to believe.

Bottom Line: I don't think the Gathering Storm did a good job of launching the Katerina Chronicles, since it was rather confusing and offered very little information to keep you hooked - in my opinion - I did like some of the characters, though. The Gathering Storm comes out January 10th, 2012.
star1/2
Alex

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