A review by lazygal
Guardian of the Gate by Michelle Zink
3.0
I'm being a little generous with this, as it's really a 2.5-star book, in large part because it suffers from series-itis: if you haven't read Book One, it will take you a while to get into Book Two (and I hadn't read Book One).
The plot is rather simplistic - battle between Good and Evil, set in vaguely Victorian era London. There's a Prophecy, and twins (Lia and Alice) who appear to be on different sides yet completely linked by this Prophecy. Book Two is largely concerned with a trip to a mysterious island, Altus, and the retrieval of missing pages from the Prophecy.
The other reason that I wanted to give the book 2.5 stars was because of Altus. It feels like a rip-off of the Avalon imagined by Marion Zimmer Bradley in The Mists of Avalon, and part of me resented that. It may have been intended as an hommage, or an unconscious similarity, but... if you loved the original, you may be equally bothered.
ARC provided by publisher.
The plot is rather simplistic - battle between Good and Evil, set in vaguely Victorian era London. There's a Prophecy, and twins (Lia and Alice) who appear to be on different sides yet completely linked by this Prophecy. Book Two is largely concerned with a trip to a mysterious island, Altus, and the retrieval of missing pages from the Prophecy.
The other reason that I wanted to give the book 2.5 stars was because of Altus. It feels like a rip-off of the Avalon imagined by Marion Zimmer Bradley in The Mists of Avalon, and part of me resented that. It may have been intended as an hommage, or an unconscious similarity, but... if you loved the original, you may be equally bothered.
ARC provided by publisher.