Katharine KerrReseñas

I don't have a lot of patience for high fantasy, especially historically accurate medieval Welsh fantasy. Just not my cup of tea.

Only made it to about 7% - DNF

It's probably a fine story but I think I missed the boat. Perhaps I could have appreciated it at a different time in my life but at this time, unfortunately, I'm not interested.

That prologue was difficult on audio. I can't easily go back and re-listen to something. (I did plan to restart the book so I could re-listen to the prologue as I became more familiar with the story but it was so different than what came next and now, I've DNF'd it). There was some dreamy ambiguousness about "starting in the dark and ending in the dark but you must stay in the light". There are people without faces because they've been in the light too long and then they suddenly have faces.... Then chapter 1 begins and we are in medieval times with a female child being the main character. Her mother has died and she is on the road with her mercenary father.

If I understand correctly there will be 3 main characters and we will follow them, with back and forth time jumps, for over 400 years as they are reincarnated trying to do something correctly.

Descriptions and reviews list all kinds of interesting things but I think for me, at this time, it's too much with all the "fantasy" names and places and time jumps and I don't really want to read a story with a child MC. I'm old af and would like to spend time with characters on this side of experience.

Just as good as the first time.

I am really enjoying this series again. Very happy that I didn't finish it the first time around (I started in 2008 when Kindle was just getting off the ground and ebooks were scarce) so I have no idea how it is going to end.

This is true epic fantasy, of a kind that we don't seem much of these days. And the ones we see seem to be taking 10 years to finish and or get the next books out.

I'm not enjoying this group as much as the previous one. Lilli is a bit mushy and Prince Merryn doesn't seem very likable.

I never really liked Salamander and Dallashadra (still don't) so I am surprised that I like this one as much as I did.

I would have liked more story--the end felt a bit rushed, but enjoyable nonetheless.

You ever read an older book, one that's been around for decades (30ish in this case) and say "If only I'd found you sooner".

DAGGERSPELL is that book for me. I vaguely remember always seeing these books on the shelves at the used book stores I frequented, but it never occurred to me to pick it up. Having read this first one I wonder at why that was. This is basically every single trope I thirsted for as a tween/teen desperately seeking fantasy.

Jill, a young girl who's destined for great things and caught between two futures.

Cullyn, a gruff merc who wants to deny the future as much as possible because the now is fine.

Rhodry, a nobleman who feels aimless but largely wants nothing more then to do the right thing.

Nevyn, wise weirdo who probably shouldn't keep all those secrets to himself because let's face it they do no one any good unsaid.

All stuck in a fate they all couldn't avoid if they tried.

This book, maybe because of when it was written (and revised) feels like my childhood reading Mercedes Lackey, Marjorie Kellogg, Tanya Huff, Janny Wurts and Elizabeth Scarborough. The paperback is old - yellowed, stained and with a very creased binding while retaining that old paperback smell of well worn paper and ink. The pages feel roughly textured and the speech is oddly formal even amongst the common folk and their rough slang.

I think nostalgia partially had me enjoying this since some of it bored me (I was more interested in Jill than any of her past lives) and I was somewhat nettled by how casually Cullyn's answer to getting Jill to listen was to slap her. 13 year old Alex wouldn't have even given it a second thought, 34 year Lexie is like WHY YOU TAKE THAT JILL.

I do have the next two books in the series so I'll be reading them. It's...a good length long so eventually I might get to them all.

Resurrection, is the same story as the chapter with that name in the novel Freeze Frames

Second in the Nola O'Grady books, where she lives in San Francisco with her motley extended Irish family and her new, Israeli lover/bodyguard.

The story follows on from book 1, which if you havent read (like me) it's a little hard to catch up on, but generally the story is ok. She is following up in chasing the missing members of the coven that was broken up in Book 1. Meanwhile there are entities coming over from an alternate dimension, her brother is trying to get his new radioactive girlfriend over from this alternate dimension (where she has been working as a prostitute), a new business partner of her brother in law is blackmailing him and is in far too deep. There's also a small mystery of Nola's missing Irish father, who in this book she finds out why he's missing, that he's not really as dead as everyone thought, and some of the reasons he left Ireland in the first place.

Nola has psychic powers, which now places her at the head of a really really secret agency. She is following up the other people from the coven she broke up in book 1, an investigation that leads her to more deaths, more visitations and surprises from alternate worlds. I dont know the background behind the "not wanting to eat" issue - she's not anorexic, just never seems to be hungry and is always being told to eat - and there are detail descriptions of what she's wearing (I dont know why). They seem to change clothes more often than they eat, which is a little strange (and of course, no visits to the bathroom)!

Heerlijke serie met fijne karakters. Interessante wereld met Gallische invloeden. De incarnaties maken het wat lastig soms om het verhaal te volgen, maar het maakt het ook weer meteen erg intrigerend.

Deze serie wordt echt steeds beter en hij begint al zo goed.

I can appreciate that this is carefully plotted, that the characters have struggles and growth, that it's not the formulaic fluff reinforcing some unsaid ideas about society and history that are really quite harmful, that it's a depiction not an endorsement. I still didn't enjoy it, though I did have that trainwreck-need to know what happened. It's not that I can't ever like this sort of high fantasy saga, but it's pretty rare, and whatever combination of elements that works for me (or worked when I was twelve) is missing now. Honestly I really can't get over the sibling thing.

Not only is Daggerspell a generic epic fantasy, it's a generic epic fantasy prologue. There's nothing that happens in this novel that couldn't have been briefly explained in three pages preceding a much more eventful main story.

Too "dark fantasy" for me, didn't like most of these.½

A brilliant story and convincing sub-creation well worth exploring. There's much here about the nature of magic, and Deverry's mythology and metaphysics are an enchanting bit of art.

Someday, in my voluminous spare time, I'd love to continue the series.

While I liked some of the stories, others were a bit of a trudge to get through.

I really enjoyed this. It was a neat world with engaging characters and the incarnations were believable as people who have learned (or not) from previous lives.

nápad s inkarnací postav
zajímavý magic system
-většina postav bylo nezajímavých
-kolísající kvalita vyprávění
-příběh
-milostný trojúhelník v každé době
Knížka nastolila dobrý základ pro budoucí díly, snad s poutavějším příběhem.

-lepší než první díl
-občas příliš jednoduchý dialog, který mi stylem připomínal muzikál (pravděpodobně způsobeno překladem)
-obscénní scény mučení½

At first glance I didnt like it at all, but there were some cool parts with the magic called dweomer.

Feminist high fantasy. So glad to have found it.

Read it while still a teen and remembered it very fondly. Tried reading it again recently but the writing seemed a bit too puerile. Still, I would recommend it if you wanted to ease young readers into the fantasy genre. Katharine Kerr spins an engrossing tale of love gone wrong, jealously, betrayal and revenge, all rendered with poignancy.

Haven't read them all yet, but have read these:

~ The Forest's Not for Burning by Katherine Lawrence 2.5* a detective travels in the magical realm and the human realm to solve a "crime".

~ "I'll Give You Three Wishes...." by Kevin Andrew Murphy 3.5* a witch and an out of work woodcutter, work together to take advantage of wood nymph's magic of granting wishes.

~ Trees Perpetual of Sleep by Nina Kiriki Hoffman Read this in Permeable Borders 4.5* Loved! A story about Matt and Terry Dane (who is a witch). While Terry is doing her summer solstice ritual, Matt can hear the tree talking to her. Trees don't usually talk to Matt. She connects better with human-made items. We meet Lewis, a male witch. He promises to help Matt root herself and she promises to teach him about roaming.

~ The Triple Death by Ken St. Andre 3.5* A fun story about Gawaine (King Arthur's nephew and a Knight of the Round Table). The ending kinda failed for me but it was a good read up until then.

~ Out of the Woods by Lawrence Watt-Evans 4.5* A woman on vacation in London is driving and almost hits a man in the road. The man turns out to be from the 1500s and claims to have been stuck in the fairy realm. Well that is what he first says. His story changes .... Well done Mr. Watt-Evans.

~ My Soul Into the Boughs by Teresa Edgerton 3* It was lovely to read but the ending takes deciphering. I'm not fond of trying to figure it out. // A young woman visits her dying grandmother. The woods are dying along with the grandmother. Odd stories, dreams and happenings are dismissed by the young woman until it is too late for her to leave.

~ The Clearing by Lois Tilton i/p

~ Virginia Woods by Janni Lee Simner

~ Holy Ground by Thomas S. Roche

~ Ghostwood novelette by Michelle West

~ The Memory of Peace novelette by Kate Elliott

I got it for Nina's story but I don't want to read all of them. The stories I'm skipping are under the spoiler tag

~ The Heart of the Forest by Dave Smeds
~ Ties of Love by Lawrence Schimel
~ Wood Song by Kate Daniel
~ In Fear of Little Nell by Gregory Feeley
~ How the Ant Made a Bargain by Karawynn Long
~ These Shoes Strangers Have Died Of by Bruce Holland Rogers
~ The Force That Through the Green Fuse by Mark Kreighbaum
~ The Prism of Memory by Jo Clayton
~ Benbow by Nancy Etchemendy
~ Weeds by Brook West and Julia H. West
~ Fiat Silva by Jack Oakley
~ Viridescence by Connie Hirsch
~ Everything Has a Place by Barbara A. Denz
~ The Monsters of Mill Creek Park novelette by Susan Shwartz

Not as good as I was expecting from Kerr, more of a paranormal romance than urban fantasy. The basic premise is quite good, but somehow Kerr ends up assuming more than is warranted for how the characters are introduced.

Maya is a young art student with a problem - not just the usual of being desperately poor, but also that her strange anemia is actually caused by a vampire virus, and so she can only feel well when she's stolen some elan or chi energy from others. She's basically been well brought up even if her parents are now dead, and so she feels very guilty doing so and tries to avoid it as long as possible. She is practising her portrait skills at a town fair when a mysterious stranger offers her a job - she couldn't draw what her eyes saw of him and he was impressed at her ability to see through his illusions. It turns out he's a runemancer, from the Nordic tradition, but he's managed to pick up a form of lycanthropy, and turns into bear at the full moon. The job he offered was to live in his rich mansion, and each month lock him into a secure area so that he doesn't hurt anyone while transformed. Maya despite her heritage is somewhat disbelieving, but any chance to escape her current prospects and pay off some bills seems like a rsik worth taking.

Instead of working forward from this status of slightly naive practitioners still learning their talents, the moment there's trouble (family) all of sudden Tor can do and cast all sorts of things with or without preparation (why does only some working require extensive rituals?) and Maya goes immediately from being all concerned about spending Tor's money, to possessing all the normal things - hiking boots, meals out with friends, endless art supplies et al without any concern about how she acquired them. It's these little world-building contradictions and failures that through the reader out of the world. Kerr is normally better than this. I also wasn't convinced that the copous sex was really necessary or that Maya would just melt into his arms, even if she otherwise did manage to retain agency and voice.

Not one of her best, nor the best of urban fantasy either, without actually being bad. Apparently there's a sequel, but this covered as much as I was interested in, even though Maya's vampirism is barely explored.½