Afbeelding auteur

Kathryne Kennedy

Auteur van Enchanting the Lady

11+ Werken 1,207 Leden 75 Besprekingen Favoriet van 2 leden

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Werken van Kathryne Kennedy

Enchanting the Lady (2007) 352 exemplaren
The Fire Lord's Lover (2010) 304 exemplaren
Double Enchantment (2008) 119 exemplaren
My Unfair Lady (2009) 96 exemplaren
Enchanting the Beast (2009) 88 exemplaren
Beneath the Thirteen Moons (2003) 87 exemplaren
The Lady of the Storm (2011) 81 exemplaren
The Lord of Illusion (2012) 45 exemplaren
Everlasting Enchantment (2013) 32 exemplaren
The Assassin's Lover (2015) 2 exemplaren

Gerelateerde werken

Sword and Sorceress XIII (1996) — Medewerker — 276 exemplaren

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female

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I just realized that this series is incredibly underrated in how it deals with colonialism in fantasy. Fantasy colonialism what ifs are always very tricky because they usually involve white people speculating about what if the sun never set in a different empire that wasn't Britain, and the people are usually coded as people of color. This is problematic on a number of levels because it just doesn't ring true with our reality, and also westerners don't really have a lot of familiarity with non-western philosophy, so the methods of imperialism are the same, but the people are just brown now, which also doesn't ring true. This series side steps this by having England, (and apparently only England Wales is exempt and I am assuming so is Scotland) be colonized by magical creatures who are pretty unambiguously coded European so of course the methodology is explained. They have a Rebellion like in Star Wars, they don't like colonialist rule, but the story acknowledges that stealing some powerful scepters isn't going to undo colonialism, nor is telling the colonizers to go back to where they came from, and also what do we do with miscegenated peoples. The book acknowledges that there is nuance to this issue, but it is not a question that needs to be dealt with in this particular story because it is a romance, it is not within its purview.… (meer)
 
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kittyfoyle | 12 andere besprekingen | Mar 15, 2024 |
As a Warning, this will have some vaguely insinuated spoilers.

I'm a big fan of Kathryne Kennedy's. I love her Relics of Merlin books and I really enjoyed My Unfair Lady historical romance. When I heard about this it wasn't even a question--I wanted it. The plot was intriguing, the cover (the original cover) was awesome and I'm a sucker for fantasy-historical romances. And in a lot of ways this book didn't let me down.

Truthfully speaking it didn't let me down at all except for the resolution of the problem facing Dominic and Cassandra. Its not that I didn't believe it, I did or that it didn't seem plausible, but it left so many open-ended issues to my thinking.

Plausibility was established very quickly, other than their personality differences Dominic and his father were identical, so yes the resolution was possible assuming Dominic could uphold his end of it. But that was the whole problem I had as well;I couldn't believe that someone of Elven Fire Lord's stature would so easily be emulated. Even by his own son. And the book didn't allow for too much thinking after the fact, it happened, some loose ends regarding Cassandra were tied up and then suddenly the end.

Obviously this is the first in a series, so it will (hopefully) be discussed later on, but as an ending it left me feeling unsatisfied and thinking it was more of a cop out.

As for the rest of the book, like I said I was very happy! The world of 1724 London ruled by Elves, is much more political and cunning then the 'real' Victorian London. The Elves don't view humans as really worth their time, but they allow the royal humans some latitude (like special pets really). The Resistance that Cassandra belongs to is dedicated to pushing the Elves out of power for good, or at the very least getting some better freedoms for humans and half-elves.

Despite all appearances to the contrary Cassandra was sent to kill Dominic, a Champion of the Fire Lord's (as well as being his half-human son) who has learned to keep his emotions tightly locked away so his father couldn't exploit them. Its rather amusing to watch both Cassandra and Dominic internally vie for who won't care for who the most. But love, it has a way of equalizing things.

My favorite character remains Ador, the a dragon in the Fire Lord's keeping. He's rather disdainful of everyone, but he is grudgingly fond of Dominic and Cassandra. Well tolerant at least.

In the end I fell in love with the world and the premise, so I'll be reading the second book sure as rain, but this one just wasn't my cup of tea unfortunately.
… (meer)
 
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lexilewords | 22 andere besprekingen | Dec 28, 2023 |
This is the fourth book of Kennedy's I've read, though this is the first straight historical. Her series with Dorchester, the Relics of Merlin, are infinitely entertaining and amusing with a dash of magic. For a different spin, MY UNFAIR LADY has suspense and a murderous plot afoot for the heroine and hero to foil.

(for the full review please refer to Romance Reader at Heart)
 
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lexilewords | 5 andere besprekingen | Dec 28, 2023 |
DOUBLE ENCHANTMENT, the second book in the Relics of Merlin books by Kathryn Kennedy, is set roughly forty years before its predecessor, ENCHANTING THE LADY. This book actually serves to explain some of the societal differences between 'real' Victorian England and Kennedy's 'magical' Victorian England that weren't explained, in so many words, in the first book. The fact that titles passed to either gender as long as the heir had the magical ability to back it up, for instance, was mentioned in ENCHANTING, but never formally stated.

Lady Jasmina Karlyle, the heroine, is vastly different from Felicity of the first book as well. They are both sweet, clever and innocent, but where Felicity was content to be passive (until the end of the book), Jasmina did everything she could to forge her own path through her problems. Mostly with mixed results, but she tried at least.

Sir Sterling Thorn, the hero, spends much of the book in utter bewilderment. I honestly felt bad for him. He meets the woman of his dreams, spends an achingly beautiful night with her, marries her and then wakes up to find her gone. If that wasn't bad enough, it turns out the woman he was in love with wasn't real at all, technically, and the person who made her was as different as night is from day. The odd glimpses of Jaz he sees in Jasmina only serves to confuse him even more. Here is a girl who goes from a cold as stone Ice Princess one second, to a fiery, passionate courtesan the next, only to go back to the Ice Princess moments later!

The world feels real, as if I'm not reading a fantasy, but in fact a historical accounting of that time. Little details of life that many people feel would be so much easier if they had magic to perform the task are shown to be just as tedious and time-consuming. You can spell a broom to do your sweeping for you, but the energy required to do such a feat, however, might prove to be more tiring then the manual labor itself! Then also, magic seems to be such an ingrained facet of life that unicorns escorting a golden coach is as commonplace to these people as seeing a dog in a park for us.

I felt while reading the book, however, that it didn't grasp my attention quite as much as the first book. It didn't feel like a 'second' book to a connected series (though they can be read alone quite easily), but more like the first book. As mentioned previously, details that were talked about in the first book are actually explained in this book and I felt as if Jasmina and Sterling weren't as strong a couple as Felicity and Terence from ENCHANTING had been. Part of that could have been due to the fact that Terence was a were-lion, while Sterling is a were-stallion.

One mystery I remain puzzled about is Prince Albert. His age is never given (and I can't be certain that the author is following the 'real' Albert's age either), but he is a grown man in DOUBLE ENCHANTMENT (set in 1848) and in ENCHANTING THE LADY (set in 1882). I remember Felicity thinking that if Prince Albert knew her parents, that he must have been a child, but she wasn't above eighteen herself and her parents died young. It might be I am looking too deeply into this, however.

The series is turning out to be a delightful surprise to me and I look forward to the next book!
… (meer)
 
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lexilewords | 6 andere besprekingen | Dec 28, 2023 |

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Statistieken

Werken
11
Ook door
1
Leden
1,207
Populariteit
#21,277
Waardering
½ 3.6
Besprekingen
75
ISBNs
35
Favoriet
2

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