Ellen

I got about an hour and a half into this poor thing. I kept hoping it would get up and walk. Run. Limp. Something.
It never moved for me. The premise, the understanding of words, interested me very much, but they never figured out where or how to go with that.

This is delightful. It's sort of Harry Dresden meets Monty Python and stalks Punch and Judy. The language is very witty, and that did it all for me.Occult without being nasty. Full of some real twists and turns. And very British. Really liked this.

I loved the Chanur series. And this is the best of them. The humor is tighter, funnier, more real, more in every way. And the aliens are wonderfully three dimensionals that you really connect with. There's nothing cute about it. It's solid anthropological S&F, and one Cherryh's very best. Highly recommended!
Hilfy has grown up to by Pyanfar's heir in every way, captain, rogue, clan head and almost pirate. What a good book!

Older books sometimes suffer from the information available at the time. This one does rather badly. The characters are so strange in this book. They go from being terrified of something quite unspecific to being jovially numb. It's quite unclear whether they are haunted or psychological unwell. In ways that don't make sense to any psychology I've studied. It neither ran true to the characters or the nature of hauntings. I found it very hard to finish and unsatisfying when I did.
Even when we have a book written in a time when we don't have a good idea clinically what is wrong with someone, I do expect good writing to supply a reasonable description. This rings sadly false.

This is not an overwhelming book. It's light and pleasant fluff, mostly. The characters are neither deep or wide.They are, to the main, likable. But it's a pleasant read and a look at Victoriana India which I did find interesting.

The plot line on this is past obvious but it managed to take some interesting spins in the details. I did not enjoy the southern aspects of this book. It was more about attitude than accent. It's premises about ghosts are quite good. And it's a house I would love to visit, just from the descriptions.

This is one of my favorite childhood books. I'm so grateful this is unabridged and so well done.
We forget that at one point, slavery was not only a law of lands but a hallowed tradition in many lands. The mix of culture here is a brilliant but violent clash. The sense of this woman of one world in another could be a trip to fairy land but it is all real. all in a not very long ago. highly recommended.

I've been a fan of Nancy Springer since I read Fair Peril, years ago. She's funny, unexpected and very smart.
This book has some plot issues that don't work as well as they might for me. I could hear the plot twists a bit too far head to be surprised by them. And some of the plot was a stretch for me.
But she explores the nature of romantic love, motherly love, married love, and remembered love in a way that's quite unexpected and brilliant. I normally hate love stories. This is one that really had a solid decency to it. I'm delighted Nancy Springer has turned to adult fiction again.

I've become of fan of Melissa Marr and particularly loved Graveminder. this is a much darker book with a much grimmer world. The premises are intriguing , but the fight competitions are simply nasty. And it's really hard to imagine the characters functioning in the human world, given the predilections of the carnival one. I don't see me caring enough to read through to the next book. It's a far icker universe and not enough passion or beauty to carry me through.
I also find Caleb's southern accent personally offensive.
It's a matter of where your tolerances are, but I'd give this one a mild thumbs down. there's no amount of tender young love that improves this.

There's something sadly missing here. The movie was sad, clunky and kind of neat because it contrasted so well with the outward lives of these people.You could feel the limits and the lacks in them.

It's really easy to hate the mean girl qualities in the adults as well as the children. And some how, without George Cluny's eyes, much harder to forgive.

I may or may not finish this book. So far, I want to do vile things to these very unredeemed and unredeemable brats in paradise.

The language is the largest pleasure here. The use of the words does echo Galway nicely. And the reader is familiar to them.
The pooka is a user friendly version, almost too clean for these days. I read this book when it came out and it has dated slightly, but it's still a lovely read.

I was just reading a book that's current young adult and thinking how very dark it was willing to go. This reminded me of a time when that was not true.