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A review by siria
Cold Magic by Kate Elliott
3.0
This felt like a lot of set-up for a second and much more interesting book. I was intrigued by Cold Magic's world-building—an alternate, magic-wielding England during the Industrial Revolution, on the edge of a Europe where the Romans never defeated the Carthaginians and where Mandé peoples from West Africa have long intermarried with Celtic peoples of northern England to create a hybrid culture, one which is just recovering from the effects of its own Napoleonic Wars—just enough to want to continue on with the trilogy. There are an awful lot of possibilities opened up by the historical changes which Elliott has set up here—though I have to admit that I'm uneasy about her decision to have North America be inhabited by trolls rather than humans before the arrival of a Welsh explorer called ap Meuric.
However, the pacing and the characterisation don't seem to have received the same care as did the world-building, and I'm very rarely a fan of the "You've tried to kill me but gosh your jawline is pretty so I guess we must be in love" school of romance. (Yes, I love Pride and Prejudice, but much of the action of that book revolves around the interaction between Lizzy and Darcy and a mutual reassessment of their interactions with one another and of themselves—the development of Catherine and Andevai's relationship is given much shorter shrift and would have needed a lot more breathing space for me to buy it, let alone root for it.) It wasn't Jane Eyre bad, but I'm not at all invested in their relationship right now. We'll see what Volume 2 brings, I suppose.
However, the pacing and the characterisation don't seem to have received the same care as did the world-building, and I'm very rarely a fan of the "You've tried to kill me but gosh your jawline is pretty so I guess we must be in love" school of romance. (Yes, I love Pride and Prejudice, but much of the action of that book revolves around the interaction between Lizzy and Darcy and a mutual reassessment of their interactions with one another and of themselves—the development of Catherine and Andevai's relationship is given much shorter shrift and would have needed a lot more breathing space for me to buy it, let alone root for it.) It wasn't Jane Eyre bad, but I'm not at all invested in their relationship right now. We'll see what Volume 2 brings, I suppose.