TITLE: The Gathering Storm
Book 1 in the Katerina Trilogy
AUTHOR: Robin Bridges
PUBLISHED: 2012
CATEGORY: YA
GENRE: Historical fiction, fantasy
PREMISE: A girl in old Russia learns she has the gift of Necromancy.
MY REVIEW: The historical buff in me loved this book to death. I mean old school Russia with balls and then magic as a bonus! What's not to love right? Bridges did great research and had a really interesting concept going. The world building going on in this book is wonderful.
Sadly I didn't get into that much and I'm trying to put my finger on why. I think it's a mixture of things. The main character was rather flat for my taste. I felt she and other characters were rather two-dimensional (and I felt she was Mary Sueish what with the "I can diagnose someone just by reading a book and better then a practiced doctor!"). While I enjoyed the ideas going on it got to be rather repetitive after awhile I mean, how many balls do you freaking need in a book? There was practically one going on every other chapter. It became kind of annoying really. Then it started to drag in the middle especially.
While I think this was a decent enough first book I sort of wish it had been polished more especially on the editing front. There were a lot of unneccessary scenes going on in here. Makes for a decent library read though.
WHO SHOULD READ: Gemma Doyle Trilogy fans, history buffs
MY RATING: Three and a half out of Five furry russian hats
Sounds like an interesting premise, so too bad it didn't live up to it's promise. Hope your next read is better!
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