Hallowmere: In the Serpent's Coils by Tiffany Trent
I wanted to like this book, but I can't say I did. I found it a frustrating read, as it seemed to take forever for Corinne* to figure out what was going on. In a nutshell, she wakes up from a serious illness to discover that her mother is dead and she is living with her uncle, who she does not know and who dislikes children. She has started to have visions and see and hear things that do not seem to be of this world. Because of this and because she breaks his rules, her uncle sends her to a reform school for wayward girls. It is unclear what most of the girls there have done to deserve this fate, which I found annoying. Is Corinne the only girl there simply because she can see/hear the Fey? Even when I thought I had an answer to that question, later events made me wonder. The actions of the teachers in the school seem illogical and contradictory, especially later in the book. There's a story threading through the book that is intriguing, but it doesn't go anywhere. I can only suppose that it is continued and embroidered upon in the subsequent books. But because it's not resolved in any way in this one, the reader is left wondering what it has to do with anything, although I assume we are supposed to read between the lines and get the idea that all is not as it seems. I found the idea of setting the book in 1865 fairly novel (not many fantasies of this type are set in the past), but I thought it could have been done more effectively.
There are already several books in this series, and I gather there will be ten in the series, not all of them written by Tiffany Trent. Hmmm. Okay, so it's a series, but they won't all be written by the original author? I find that...interesting.
*Was Corinne really a popular girl's name in 1850, when she would have been born?
I wanted to like this book, but I can't say I did. I found it a frustrating read, as it seemed to take forever for Corinne* to figure out what was going on. In a nutshell, she wakes up from a serious illness to discover that her mother is dead and she is living with her uncle, who she does not know and who dislikes children. She has started to have visions and see and hear things that do not seem to be of this world. Because of this and because she breaks his rules, her uncle sends her to a reform school for wayward girls. It is unclear what most of the girls there have done to deserve this fate, which I found annoying. Is Corinne the only girl there simply because she can see/hear the Fey? Even when I thought I had an answer to that question, later events made me wonder. The actions of the teachers in the school seem illogical and contradictory, especially later in the book. There's a story threading through the book that is intriguing, but it doesn't go anywhere. I can only suppose that it is continued and embroidered upon in the subsequent books. But because it's not resolved in any way in this one, the reader is left wondering what it has to do with anything, although I assume we are supposed to read between the lines and get the idea that all is not as it seems. I found the idea of setting the book in 1865 fairly novel (not many fantasies of this type are set in the past), but I thought it could have been done more effectively.
There are already several books in this series, and I gather there will be ten in the series, not all of them written by Tiffany Trent. Hmmm. Okay, so it's a series, but they won't all be written by the original author? I find that...interesting.
*Was Corinne really a popular girl's name in 1850, when she would have been born?
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