Elemental Masters Book 3.
Has it really been ten days since I finished a book? I suppose it is possible - last week I was trying very hard to finish a gift for a friend and then I was out of town over the weekend. Still seems rather improbable. I'll have to check and see if there is anything that I forgot to log. I really need to upload these write-ups to the web. The first date in this batch of unpublished posts is in February.
I know I bought this one to have something to take with me over the weekend that I knew I would enjoy and wasn't too taxing. As it was I hardly had a chance to pick up my kindle, although I got some work done on a new project. In spite of the familial preoccupation with baseball, my sister and I managed to get in several hours of talking.
Guess all that doesn't really matter much. I did enjoy this reread - once I got time to read it. I'm enjoying the fairy tale aspect of them far more this time. - And she pricked her finger and fell into a deep sleep and so did everyone else in the palace - Still good fun and it is entertaining to see how modern writers handle the old plots. I think most of the present generation of fantasy writers has given it a whirl.
As I suggested above and telegraphed quite clearly by the title, this one is a treatment of Sleeping Beauty. Evils of the industrial revolution and all that. It just occurred to me that it is easy enough for us to treat the industrial revolution with proper horror from our safe vantage point in history, but when Charlotte Bronte wrote Shirley it was actually happening - I know it had a great deal of immediacy that is lacking from current treatments. We know a great deal more about the long term effects, but somehow the sense of chaos and a world out of control doesn't come through in quite the same way.
The focus here is on potteries and the young women who were "paintresses" and lived and breathed lead based paints - until they died early and horribly. There is also a supernatural element, naturally, these are books about magic and the evil villains used the industry as a base of operations. Now, wrap "Sleeping Beauty" around all that.
Lackey does it rather successfully. I like some of her stories better than others, but she never seems to completely fail. I will have to check out a couple of series of hers that I have never read - maybe when school is out.
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