Magic Under Glass, by Jaclyn DolamoreYoung Adult, 2010
Nimira is a music-hall dancer/singer working for pennies. When wealthy sorcerer Hollin Parry hires her to sing with an automaton, she is delighted and hopeful of her future. But when the automaton turns out to be more than that, and the mystery of Parry's late wife resurfaces, Nim will get swept up into a mystery and adventure that could very well destroy the world as she knows it.
Raspberry: The beginning held promise, the middle made me go 'huh?' and the ending left me hanging. The storyline reminded me a lot of Sally Gardner's Red Necklace, but I felt the characters weren't quite as well developed. For example, Nim and the automaton fall in love, but all in the course of a few 'conversations' and a very short amount of time. The unrealisticness of it was only exasperated by the lack of focus it received. Overall the book seemed a bit short to handle the gravity of the plot - I wasn't scared of the bad guy and I'm not too worried about the future of the main characters.
Graded a B-.
3 comments:
Aww. I'm sad you didn't like it. Yea, character development does take points for the book. Can't wait to read it still
Read it. Felt the same disappointment. Could have been much richer book. More and more books have people "falling in love" in, as you say, a few sentences. Lazy authors books end just as the protagonists realize they are MFEO. Bleah. The best authors have love grow along with character development.
Now I'm thinking I'll skip this one. If I can't connect with the characters, any story falls flat for me. Thanks for the honest review!
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