Customer Reviews

The Queen's Necklace

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Make a pot of herb tea. Find a comfy armchair. Sit back, relax, and enjoy your visit to Teresa Edgerton's world. "The Queen's Necklace" is a rich, intriguing tale full of complex individuals and spectacular settings. It has as many plot twists as a spy thriller, that is, if spies could weave spells in jewelry and mirrors. The world resembles Europe at the time of the French Revolution. There is a plethora of corsets and puffy dresses, and men in powdered wigs and long coats, rendered in such detail as to make you think the author has the whole cast's wardrobe tucked away in her closet. Each city is a character in itself, and the author illustrates them in glorious panorama. No detail is overlooked, from tea, toast and chocolates, to the frightening beauty of the crystal heart on the enchanted necklace. She skillfully weaves the history of a whole world into a handful of pages. The sexual tension between the two main characters has an interesting twist: they're already married. But although they love each other, they have trouble showing it. He's a bit of a scalawag, and also a competent swashbuckling captain of the guard. She's secretly training in the magic arts and is not afraid to go into the dark alleys on the wrong side of town. They're both trying to save the world, but it's harder when they don't cooperate and confide in each other. Five thousand years before, Goblins were the dominant race. There are layers of Goblin cities in ruins beneath the human architecture, and remnants of enchanted "machinery" that the humans use but don't fully understand. Goblins come in all shapes and sizes. The Padfoots and the Wrynecks are easily spotted in a crowd, but some are as handsome or beautiful as humans. They move among the people as evil undetected, like Dracula in a tuxedo. If you've read Teresa Edgerton's other books, then you'll enjoy this one. "The Queen's Necklace" is a masterpiece of story-telling craftsmanship.

Fantasy of Manners returns to the bookstore with this long-awaited new work by Teresa Edgerton. The world is one of courts and courtiers, a patchwork of minor kingdoms, each with its own secret device, the magical key to its prosperity. Each kingdom guards its own secret jealously from the others, but while human spies infest the courts, an older menace plots to win a greater prize: the restoration of the ancient empire of the Maglore goblins, who once ruled them all.

This book has it all: intrigue, derring-do, mystery and romance. A delight.

Back when I was a lad, the release of a new fantasy novel would be greeted with an excited (if unimaginative) yelp of, "Oh, boy, a new fantasy novel!" Now, given the glut of works on the fantasy market, a new release only merits a yawn and a disinterested, "Oh, boy, a new fantasy novel." (Sadly, my way with words has not improved with the years.) This book is, unfortunately, not the one to inspire me with renewed enthusiasm.

It breaks away from the Dark Ages/valiant Celts and medieval England/oppressive church settings that have been so popular in recent years, I'll give it that much. Its particular milieu of stable and prosperous duchies and principalities is equivalent to, say, our own mid to late 1700s in terms of technology. There are guns and clocks and operas and newspapers and the like. There's also a small degree of swashing and buckling and scattered bits of magic, the latter mainly in the form of relics from the vanquished Goblin Empire of 1,500 years ago.

The plot centers on the attempts of the long-thought-dead Maglore elite to overthrow the human interlopers and resurrect their lost empire. To this end, they begin to pilfer the hidden Goblin Jewels that are magically supporting each of the hundred or so human kingdoms, while simultaneously insinuating one of their own as the consort of a vulnerable human king. Standing against this conspiracy are the usual valiant stalwarts, primarily an estranged husband and wife, the one a guardsman and the latter a magician. For the most part, though, the defenders of goodness are a drab lot, with the exception of Raith.

The villains are scarcely better, since they tend to explode in fiery ruin if someone looks cross-wise at them. Since Goblins instantaneously ignite if the slightest spark alights upon them, and they also shrivel up like slugs if they're exposed to salt, it's hard to take them seriously as foes. They're also self-indulgent and by their own admission lack all ability to plan much further into the future than the next morning, so they tend to be dumber than tree shrews. (Which poses the interesting question of how they ever devised the magnificent and intricate machinery of the Goblin Jewels in the first place.)

The author skips back and forth between some half dozen storylines that are separated in both space and time, gradually drawing them together into one neat whole. This bouncing around at least guarantees the reader a chance to move onwards to a new section if one has bogged down with dull characters or a bland sub-plot.

Now, I make this book sound atrociously bad. It's not really all that awful; but it's also not really all that good. It's simply chock full of undeniable "thereness".

The finale is open-ended enough that another volume might be forthcoming, although this one is self-contained and complete in itself, if completely unexceptional.

Good-hearted Willrowan and appealing Lili are the hero and heroine of this convoluted sword-and-spell tale taking place in moldering old cities, amid ancient magic half-understood. They are almost overshadowed by fascinating side characters: Raith, Luke, Ys, and the dangerous Sopronisba. The story could have used some editing, both in structuring subplots and in excising the occasional regency-romance trite expression (why is brown hair always 'chestnut'?), also in smoothing out the places where the narrative falters in favor of a mini-lecture on history.

But those are minor glitches. The good news is that there are enough threads left dangling to promise a sequel, and perhaps Edgerton will find her stride. It's certainly worth buying.

Having previously read, and thoroughly enjoyed, a lot of books by this author - The Green Lion Trilogy, The Chronicles of Celydonn, etc - I was seriously looking forward to this one. Unfortunately this one is NOT in the league of her other novels, the plot is thin and unengaging, the characters are flat and rarely interesting, I just couldn't bring myself to care what happened to them at all. My best advice is this: if you are a fan of Teresa Edgerton's work, do yourself a favour, keep your good opinion intact and AVOID this one!

The Maglore were beautiful goblins who once ruled the world until their human slaves rebelled. Now they hide, plotting their return to power. Standing against them are a chosen few, Wilrowan, dashing Captain of the Queen's guard who leads another life, his lovely but neglected wife Lilliana, whose magic powers are growing, a tutor with a secret, and a traveling scholar, just to name a few. They must reclaim the various jewels that have kept the world from chaos, or watch all they know be destroyed by an evil power.

If you love swashbuckling adventures with a little romance, magic and lots of tense intrigue, you are going to love this novel. There's fencing and fighting, action and romance, and characters who leap off the pages. Buy a copy for yourself. Buy copies for your friends. You will not be disappointed.

I picked this up at a library sale and started it as our bedtime reading with low expectations - and I was very pleasantly surprised! The further into we got, the more we wanted to move on to find out the plot. Granted, it is not an earth-shattering novel, but it was extremely entertaining and the prose very nice.

This was all-in-all a great book. I liked having the character list at the beginning to refer back to because there are LOTS of characters and you can easily get confused. The romance was good - not too descriptive to be pornographic, but not too light to be boring. The frustrating part came with the jumps from past to present and the many subplots. You'll read something and take it on faith that it will be explained later and then at the end you don't really remember if everything's been explained. (And it wraps up REALLY quickly) But I did enjoy Wil and Lili's tempestuous romance and it kept me interested right from the beginning - it was easy to get into it. Happy reading!

I felt like this book couldn't decide if it was mainly a Romance novel or a Sci-fi/fantasy novel. The book's hero, Wilrowan, attempts to finally woo the woman he loves (Lili) -- 6 years after their forced marriage. I was really getting interested in this part of the story but felt that it was ultimately shortchanged when the sci-fi/fantasy part of the book took off. The author carefully adds more complexity to their relationship but then reconciles them too fast. I was looking for more of a payoff as the secrets that Wilrowan and Lili have kept from each other for 6 years start to come to light.

In addition, the way that the author jumps from past to present is confusing. Especially since she uses a calendar that she invented for this world. So I didn't have a good feel for the linear sequence of events.

Overall, I'd say that the first 50% of this book was very enjoyable, but then it started to lose focus.

For millenniums the Magore ruled the world with humanity serving as slaves to whatever whims the Goblins had. The power rested in jewels that enabled the Goblins to rule with an iron fist. Mankind, tired of its servitude finally overthrew their oppressors. Almost every Magore was killed and the few survivors fled in exile into the shadows.

Fifteen hundred years after the successful uprising, the world consists of a hundred or so kingdoms, duchies, and principalities while the Magore have become mythical creatures that never existed. However, those who endured the purge plan to regain what they lost by having a Goblin princess marry a human king in order to recover the jewels of power. Only a brave few including Captain Wilrovan Krogan (he converses with ravens and his wife Lillian (a sorcerer-physician), stand in the way of success.

The world of this epic fantasy is Renaissance Europe complete with intrigue, political infighting, and scholarly learning. The characters are three dimensional and believable within a colorful complex story line. The numerous subplots cleverly tie back to the main theme yet leave some threads so readers can expect a sequel from Teresa Edgerton, a future force within the fantasy genre.

Harriet Klausner