It’s hard for me to do this book justice with a review, because of a fault that I have which is that I don’t like narrators with very post English accents. I’ve looked up the narrator of this series: Marisa Calin and she was born in America, and yet she talks like a member of the royal family, or maybe someone who worked for the BBC 50 years ago. I know that there’s nothing wrong with being posh, and I’m sure lots of lovely people are but in my mind I associate it with colonialism and the class system and unearned privilege. The irony is that Marisa Calin is actually one of the best narrators I’ve heard in terms of putting meaning into the words and putting the emphasis on the right part of the sentence and all that – she’s also really good at giving the characters different regional accents! It’s clearly something I need to work on to get over my prejudice, but for me it was hard to see past the poshness and properly engage with the story. Which is a pity because this series is full of things I generally love in stories.
A sequel to The Lefthanded Booksellers of London, Susan is learning more about her status as the child of an ‘old one’ a sort of immortal mythical being or deity and is discovering how much she has inherited – learning about powers and trying to still be normal and not pulled over into the magical mythical side too much. She had to use her powers thought to rescue Merlin from an angry old one and then attracts the attention of this being who also has a semi-mortal child who she is trying to save from illness.
The book has nostalgia from the 80s which is the era when I was a teenager, as well as from the ancient ways from old mythology and an exciting rollicking plot and there was a lot about it that I really liked.
Sarah Wray Writer 