Reviews for Wizard's Daughter (Bride Series)

The average rating for Wizard's Daughter (Bride Series) based on 2 reviews is 2 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2012-01-31 00:00:00 Mary M. Ruprecht Coulter is a prolific and hugely popular (bestselling) author, primarily of sensuous romances, which she produces in various genres. (This one is a fantasy, set primarily in the England of 1835, but partly in an invented fantasy world called the Pale.) She wasn't really on my radar to read, but knowing my liking for speculative fiction, my wife saw and snagged this volume at a flea market as a Christmas present for me a few years ago. Recently, I pulled it out of the TBR piles as a "car book," to read aloud to her while we're between installments of a series we both like. (This actually is also part of a series, the Sherbrooke Brides, though Barb didn't know that when she bought it. But this installment at least reads perfectly well as a standalone, and that's how we approached it.) The Goodreads description just repeats the cover copy, which the author herself wrote. IMO, however, that cover copy was a misstep, because it gives us a lot of backstory which in the text of the book is gradually disclosed for effect; that effect is simply lost when you already know about it. It also gives details about plot developments that most readers would prefer to discover as they occur. Suffice it to say that we have an enigmatic prologue, which a reference to "Queen Bess" pegs as set in the late 1500s, where we meet shipwrecked sea captain Jared Vail, who takes on an unspecified "debt" to a mysterious sorcerer, and are also introduced to a beautiful little girl with a strange song, who tells him "I am your debt." Leaving us with more questions than answers, we then skip down to a London ballroom in 1835, where two people with secrets, 18-year-old Rosalind de la Fontaine and Jared's descendant Nicholas, the new Earl of Mountjoy, meet for the first time. There's romantic attraction, but there's another agenda as well, and several layers of mystery. Barb, by her own statement, would have rated this at five stars, but she experienced it in a censored version --when I read aloud to her, I ignore (or, if necessary, paraphrase or note, without repeating) the cussing, and omit the explicit sex scenes. To be fair, however, the cussing here is of the d-word sort and only occasional, and the sex all takes place in marriage. (Coulter does endow both Nicholas and Rosalind's foster brother Grayson with a background of womanizing dalliances, which is apparently supposed to establish to female readers that they're sexually desirable; astute female readers might be more apt to just roll their eyes.) At least one reviewer complained that the main characters had too much sex, but given that they were newlyweds, that's simply realistic. My only complaint would be that the explicitness wasn't necessary; it violated the couple's privacy for no real narrative purpose. (I admit that I did, just now, read/skim the parts I omitted in the first reading, but not with any salacious intent; rather, just to verify, for review purposes, that the couple weren't doing anything disgusting or vile --just things they'd prefer to be alone for.) My own reaction was less gushing, though I did like the book to a point. Coulter does do a good job of creating multiple webs of mystery, and pulling the reader's interest into them early on. Her characterizations are sharp (across the board, not just of the two main characters) and she has a dry sense of humor that several times had Barb laughing out loud, though the book isn't a comedy. In places, it's a masterful novel of manners (Jane Austen would have loved one dialogue in particular). The sympathetic characters were basically likeable (and the unsympathetic ones thoroughly dis-likable). Rosalind has more spice and sand to her than the usual Victorian heroine (Victoria would actually come to the throne in 1837) --that may be what one reviewer was referring to when he complained that the book is "anachronistic." In that respect, that's probably not a wholly fair criticism; human nature was the same in 1835 as it is now, and not all real-life Victorian females were subdued milksops. The Pale is a rather original fantasy world, with a genuine sense of alien strangeness. The ending (Epilogue) was also very well done. On the negative side, much of the dialogue here is unrealistic in places; people would never say some of these things in real life. The problem isn't so much that they're "anachronistic" --although in 1835, servants didn't talk to employers, nor total strangers to each other, as frankly as some of them do here-- as that they're inane or unrealistic in the context, as much so in 2016 as in 1835. Another major problem is that the "resolution" doesn't resolve a whole lot in some ways. There's a great deal of use of time relativity paradoxes, stopping time, blurring of identity between characters in ways that doesn't make sense. (This might appeal to Dr. Who fans, but I've never been a Whovian.) The sorcerer Sarimund can communicate with our world and influence events when the writer needs him to for the plot, but can't when she needs him to be unable to --there doesn't seem to be any other consistent law governing when he can or can't. Despite the buildup, the climactic showdown doesn't really involve any major challenge or difficulty; in that respect, it's more anticlimactic. One character also undergoes a significant attitude change, but without any convincing explanation for it. I think this was probably a passable introduction to Coulter's work, at least in this genre. As I said, I liked it (for what it is, time-passing entertainment). But I didn't like it intensely enough that I'd seek out any more of her corpus.

Review # 2 was written on 2013-07-24 00:00:00 Jacqui Owen When requesting a book on Paperbackswap a while back, I checked the poster's shelf to see if there was anything else I might want. For some reason - possibly a vitamin deficiency, or lack of oxygen to the brain- I added this book to my request. Wizard's Daughter, by "New York Times bestselling author" Catherine Coulter. This is a woman who has been writing for-virtually-ever. The "also by this author" page at the front of the book is double columned, smallish print, full. Goodreads lists "120 distinct works". I mean, none of that really means anything to me; two words: Harper Lee. But there should be a reason for that kind of longevity. I know mainstream romances tend toward the dreadful; I once wrote a letter after being stuck on my break at work with nothing to read but a borrowed romance. I read about thirty pages, and it was a two-page letter. (You're not surprised, are you?) So why did I request Wizard's Daughter? I'm a sucker for the words "romantic fantasy" (or "fantasy romance"). I know better. I do. It's just that the descriptions always seem so promising - like a cupcake with creamy icing piled high. Then you find out the baker used salt instead of sugar in the frosting and the cupcake is like styrofoam. I refer to a bit of this book as "THE dumbest thing I have ever read". If you've read other reviews of mine, you'll know I've read some stunningly stupid things. I've gotten myself into some ARCs and Netgalley books and LibraryThing Early Reviewer books that were not quite half-baked - which needed a few more months in the oven. But this. This wins all the prizes. This is, legitimately, hands down, the most absurd, dumbest, silliest - well, I'll prove it. It was going along in mediocre enough fashion; it was repetitive, and tell-don't-show, and heavy-handed, but I was mildly curious. I'd pick it up and read a couple of pages now and then. (All right, I admit: it was my bathroom book.) Then came page 43, what I can only assume is a dream sequence (I'm not reading further to find out): "An old man walked toward her, his long white robe brushing his sandals… She saw large white toes." Now, I need to break in here to question that. My eyebrows quirked when I hit that line. I don't believe in the hundreds (thousands?) of books I've read in my lifetime that I have ever seen toes mentioned in the initial description of a character - unless maybe it was a girl with painted toenails, or it was a character with talons or claws or cloven hooves or something? I don't know. "Large white toes" just seemed a bit outré. But back to the description. Waaaait for it. "He smiled at her, his teeth shining as white as his toes." AS HIS TOES. Mary had a little lamb; its fleece was white as toes. Toe White and the Seven Dwarfs. Brush with Crest - your teeth will shine as white as your toes! "NYT Bestselling Author Catherine Coulter". Which of those is the most ridiculous statement?