Jaclyn Dolamore

This was a very sweet, fun adventure story that would appeal to younger YA readers and fans of Robin McKinley and Jessica Day George. I particularly enjoyed the worldbuilding.

I thought the writing, while serviceable, could have been a bit more polished - the voice was a bit generic and every so often, the "stage directions" seemed a bit off (characters would end up standing somewhere in a room that didn't make sense to me). However, it was mostly things only a fellow writer would notice.

I am hooked on the plot and definitely will pick up the next book.… (mere)

Really 3 1/2 stars but I always round up. Normal plot: High-class boy meets low-class girl, takes her out of said situation, she gets nice clothes, people disapprove, etc. And then- Erris. Erris saved the paperboard cut-out plot and raised it to a new level. I had just finished watching Hugo and was enthralled with this little twist. I'm not sure what makes it "Steampunk" and I wish that her editor had been a bit more thorough with certain issues. And the nod to Jane Eyre was quite obvious. No shocker there. I felt like there was too much of the wrong dialogue and a lack of the obvious dialogue. But- Erris! He wasn't even all that fleshed out but I was entranced with the unique twist that he added to the story. So-- Read it. For Erris.… (mere)

Nimara takes the opportunity to leave her life as a performer in a cheap variety show to sing with an automaton, a clockwork piano man, for a wealthy sorcerer. Rumor has it the automaton is haunted but Nim doesn’t scare easily. Secrets abound at the estate where she is taken and she must figure them out if she is to truly choose her future.

I read this in a hurry. I’d had it on my list, but put it aside for something more urgent. I am so glad I picked it back up. It covers the topic of prejudice in a way that might help some to see what slights they haven’t noticed before couched in terms of human, faerie, and gender rather than black and white. I’ll be looking for the sequel, which comes out in April of 2012.

YA, series, faeries, romance, prejudice, automaton… (mere)

"I should like to forget my secrets myself," he said. "If secrets could burn, I'd be the first to light the match."

(Okay, I guess I do have things to say.)

This was a whole lot of story packed into a tiny book. I mean, a lot.

I admittedly liked the feeling that went through most of the book - that we were looking into one modest story in a world that sprawled much larger, and was much more complicated, heated, and dangerous. From other reviews I read, this point is a little divisive, but for my part I think Dolamore did wonderfully in revealing the world around our characters not like a textbook but like how someone would talk about their lives...bits and pieces of Nim's homeland were described in associations and memories, the information about the fairies and the war were from overheard conversations or sneaked into everyday discussions. I love that kind of stuff and it was done spectacularly here.

The plot is small but not simple. Character dynamics may not be the most complicated or developed of things, but they're varied and there are many. Magic is never explained but shown instead, and even if that made me a little confused, everything in this review so far came together to make a quaint little fairy tale with numerous threads and ideas and surprises. (Which is also kinda why I'm not keen on going into the second book, although you've been warned that this one NEEDS a sequel for the plot.)

It had some duller points, though. The villains were perfectly, painfully average and underdeveloped, so when they really started becoming important, my interest waned a little. I really couldn't buy Erris and Nim as a romance - that's probably my biggest hang-up. Because Erris was sorta stuck without a personality for most of the book, I could buy Nim's friendship, her need to protect and save him because hey - she has a conscience after all. But the romance? Way too much for me. I was far more interested in reading about Nim and Hollins's complicated relationship - nowhere near romance either, but it had a subtlety that Erris and Nim lacked.

So...yeah. A nice little fairy tale with a world beyond its borders and a ton of imagination. It reads like a middle-grade book (maybe it is?) but it has a ton of charm and Nim's personality carries it well.… (mere)