What do You think about The Wizard Of London (2006)?
Skip this one, if you have the power. (I, too, have felt the urge to finish terrible books just because I started them, and to start them just because I've read the rest of the series. I feel your pain, completionists, especially where this book is concerned, and I support you in your coming time of trial.)This is one of the most mindnumbingly boring books I've ever read, and I've read The Grapes of Wrath. It's based on "The Snow Queen," a very odd and confusing fairy tale to be sure, but that doesn't have anything to do with how boring this book is because the book doesn't seem to have a thing to do with the fairy tale.What it does have to do with is two special kids in a boarding school and their animal companions. Two sickeningly average special kids in a boarding school and their sickeningly average animal companions. Seriously, the majority of the book is the two little girls doing... Well, not much of anything. It's SO day-in-the-life that MY life was infinitely more interesting, and it took me about three weeks of two or three chapters a day to get through this beast.I did like the new things Lackey incorporated into the magic system, how it's all very systematic but still complicated, but still a lot of elements just seemed stuck in there to take up space. I also liked how sensible the characters (mostly the kids) were, always telling someone else where they were going and when they'd be back, etc., but at the same time, they keep foiling the villains' plans and the plot never goes anywhere.The one character I liked never stuck around longer than a few pages. (And it's not the woodland spirit you might be thinking of if you've already read it. It's the husband.) The depths that were available were never plumbed. I kept reading hoping it would get better, but it never did. Skip it.
—Hannah Givens
This held my attention but others in the series seemed to be more successful to me. I think perhaps Lackey has discovered with there being only four elements, that that rather limits the story lines. In this one she is bringing in psychic talents as well as the original elemental mages. The problem is, the story is very black and white. I'm still not so clear as to why the talented children were attacked in the first place and who the attacker was. I felt that the attacker was supposed to tie in with the bad guy (ok, lady) but if so, I missed that part of the story. It rather seemed as though two stories were jammed together into one and it wasn't all that smoothly done. At one point in fact I thought that perhaps these had been published as short stories and then republished as one story. The reason why I thought so, was a completely unnecessary recap after the first big incident of the children being attacked. The next chapter had a recap of the various characters and what their talents were that just seemed completely out of place. One of the more successful characters was that of Robin Goodfellow, a powerful member of the fey, the oldest in Britain. Otherwise other characters just weren't all that interesting. Nan was probably the next most interesting followed by the two birds. I'll try the next in the series, but may abandon this series if I am not satisfied with that title.
—Joan
Lackey's books can get fairly formulaic (being as prolific as she is, I imagine new and surprising twists can sometimes be difficult to obtain), so I was very pleasantly surprised when she introduced Talented characters instead of strictly Elemental magicians. I would really like to see more stories surrounding the Talented. I think they have a lot to offer.Lord Alderscroft is a ninny and the biggest arrogant sod I've read about in a great while. I don't like him. I don't like him in any other book, and I doubt I ever will. I think this was supposed to make him more human (something he desperately needed after The Serpent's Shadow), but I don't honestly see much change there. Every time he's mentioned, Alderscroft is aloof, classist, sexist, and arrogant to a fault. He's not a villain, but he's also not some snuggy bear we'll fall in love with because of a tacked on epilogue. Sarah and Nan were my favorite characters. I like to think it's supposed to be that way. I would also like to see more of them in upcoming books. Or get a series of their own.This all being said, I did enjoy the book, more than I thought I would. This is mostly because the sections of Lord Arrogant were few and far between with a lot of Nan and Sarah making up the majority of it.
—Renee Faller
