24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Awesome and fun story, September 11, 2010
This review is from: Coronets and Steel (Hardcover)
I picked up Coronets and Steel at Barnes and Noble the other day, since I had a B&N gift card I'd been saving, and a desperate urge for a new book.
I finished it last night at 1 am, and the only reason I didn't finish it the night before (really, earlier that day) at 5 am was that I had had a really long day and my eyes were fuzzing out on me. As I paged toward the end I glared in horror at the meager five pages awaiting my greedy eyes. What do you mean there were only a few pages left? The story couldn't be over, could it? Luckily, there will be a sequel, which I am eagerly awaiting.
Coronets and Steel begins with a Kim, a new college graduate, searching through Europe for traces of her family history*. A vague memory of her mother's and a couple theater tickets have brought her to Vienna, where she resumes her quest in a genealogy office. Leaving the office, she sees her first ghost, though she doesn't know it at the time, who leads her into an encounter with a man who swears he knows her. But she's never met him in her life.
He's handsome though, and polite, so she gets a drink with him...and ends up waking up on a train. And promptly escapes out the window.
A zigzag chase ensues with the handsome Alec finally apologizing and explaining his mistake. Turns out she looks just like someone named Ruli, who also happens to be Kim's cousin. A bit of Kim's family history is explained and she ends up traveling to Dobrenica, a small country in the Carpathian Mountains, where her grandmother was born. Where her grandmother was a princess.
I admit to being pleasantly surprised with much of this plotline. You're not going to get Princess Diaries here. There were one or two turns that felt predictable, but some of that predictability, I think, comes from reading similar stories by Sherwood Smith. There are echoes of Once a Princess and Twice a Prince in the plotline, as well as Crown Duel, but Kim is a different character than either of those two heroines. She's more serious than Sasha and more experienced and laid back than Mel. Echoes of Sasha resounded in her speaking style, at least at first, but both of the characters are from LA, so I was able to write it off as nothing more than dialect; as the story progresses and you learn more about Kim, the echoes of Sasha disappear.
I was frustrated at a few points with Kim's apparent denseness with the situation. She often assumes the best of people, which gets her into trouble in a few situations, but her escapes from those situations are clever and exciting to read. Also, her saving grace, Kim admits to her denseness when shown the real motivations behind such situations. That helps make Kim's denseness a character trait, not a plot device.
At one point I remember thinking "if she gets kidnapped here I will be disappointed, because I can so see it coming" and she did get kidnapped. Almost. My irritation with being right was swept away by her ingenious escape and the resulting piece of good luck it brings.
At no point was the story so predicable that I could see the ending. A few scenes were expected, but once the story got into full flow I couldn't figure out any of the turns. The few guesses I had turned out to be wrong.
I like Kim. She's practical, funny, serious, and learns how to think on her feet.
The ending leaves quite a few hanging threads and questions to be answered. Not to mention my panicked reading of the last chapter while thinking "there'sgottabemorethere'sgottabemore" and the shriek of "Nooooooooo!" when I got to the last page. But did I mention there's going to be a sequel? I can't wait.
*If you're wondering, this is not a Sartorias-deles story. I wouldn't quite place it in Urban Fantasy either, though technically it fits the qualifications. Magic isn't so in-your-face as most UF I know. I'd put it in Modern Fantasy, with a subplot of romance. On her website Sherwood calls it a Ruritarian romantic adventure.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
left hanging, September 27, 2010
This review is from: Coronets and Steel (Hardcover)
I really enjoyed this book. It is (for the most part) fast paced and action filled. I found only a few spots where it seemed to drag a bit. With her believable, 21st century characters struggling to adjust their conventional, scientific view of the world, Sherwood Smith does an excellent job of combining real life history with some adventurous fantasy. The worst part of this book is it's very incomplete ending. The author says she has the sequel 3/4 of the way finished; I would wait til that is finished to read this. In typical Sherwood Smith fashion, this book and its sequel appear to make one volume split into two. So unless you want to be left hanging for a year like I am, I might wait until the release date of the sequel is a bit nearer. Overall though, it's a great book that I would recommend.
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Continue pls, October 1, 2010
This review is from: Coronets and Steel (Hardcover)
Only Sherwood Smith consistently writes YA books that I, being over 40, enjoy reading.
Again, here, a good intelligent story, cleverly plotted and creative good fast paced fun.
Additonally, and this is hard to do: The sense of place and history never missed, I live in Vienna and travel Europe a lot, also reading about history and economics. Here, all this is in the background, while an exciting, good story happens, and you read and read just for the plot and people, and yet - this book has a great sense of place and time, without ever boring and preaching, even a little, Ms Smith gives you a perfect view of the tensions and long reaches of a complicated history right in the middle of Europe, of Germans, Russians, Austrians, and centuries of powergames and wars - all that makes the choices of modern young people difficult. But Sherwood Smith never bores you, or tells you. She shows: Seeing how Kim learns and understands this was very good storytelling, wow! ( Like others, I found Kim very dense occasionally, but never unbearably so. )
Pantastic book - thank you!!!
I regret that I am left with half a story. The ending here is no ending at all, just a hiatus, at best.
While being willing - very willing - to spend money on Sherwood Smith, I feel slightly cheated when I get half a book. Long book, good book, but I want some closure when I will have to wait a while. This is my only complaint, and I have not taken away stars for it, as I do not know who makes decisions on book size, cutting of sequels etc.
Buy, read, enjoy this lovely book, just be aware that this has no real ending, you will want to know desperately what happens next.
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