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kathydavie's review against another edition
5.0
Revolves around the central premise of the Elemental Masters while leaping out into the Arts.
kivt's review against another edition
2.0
i remembered liking this but not being in love with it. the impression holds.
mollyxmiller's review
adventurous
dark
emotional
funny
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.25
ptothelo's review against another edition
2.0
I just didn't like this one as much as the other books. I don't know if it's the main character or what. Maybe because the others felt anchored in something deeper and I don't remember that with this one
madhamster's review against another edition
4.0
The Elemental Masters isn't exactly a series, more some vaguely inter-related books. Characters don't (or very rarely) carry over from book to book.
The series is interesting from its use of fairytale motifs as each is (sometimes very loosely) based on traditional tales. Unless I'm totally confused, this would be 'Puss in Boots'.
Ninette is an impoverished ballerina who is fired from her position and is encouraged by a talking cat to follow his instructions. These lead her to across France and the Channel to Blackpool. There she impersonates Nina, a famous Russian ballerina. However the 'real' Nina discovers finds out and arrives to seek revenge. The 'real' Nina has been possessed by an Earth Elemental with the ability to absorb humans and thereafter take their shape.
The series is interesting from its use of fairytale motifs as each is (sometimes very loosely) based on traditional tales. Unless I'm totally confused, this would be 'Puss in Boots'.
Ninette is an impoverished ballerina who is fired from her position and is encouraged by a talking cat to follow his instructions. These lead her to across France and the Channel to Blackpool. There she impersonates Nina, a famous Russian ballerina. However the 'real' Nina discovers finds out and arrives to seek revenge. The 'real' Nina has been possessed by an Earth Elemental with the ability to absorb humans and thereafter take their shape.
mamap's review against another edition
4.0
really liked the dancing theme. loosely based on fairy tale.
saidahgilbert's review against another edition
2.0
This was the worst out of all the books in this series that I've read so far.
gmvader's review against another edition
1.0
Mercedes Lackey has written over fifty books in the last twenty years. Having written only one, very mediocre book in ten years I can appreciate that this is a significant amount of work that she has accomplished. She has co-authored a large number of those books and has a large fan base of people who find her books charming and wonderful.
I had a slightly less grand experience. The story, in itself was good enough. What I think bothered me most was the lack of editing that went into the book. There were multiple typos on every page – sometimes entire words were missing. This could be the fault of the publisher for sloppy typesetting or any number of things and I could have overlooked them if there weren’t so many other things that could have also been fixed by a few attentive edits.
The word ‘indeed’ was used so often that it started to sound funny and there were a lot of over-written sentences that could have used a generous helping of editorial chopping. In particular was the exhaustive use of narrative exposition. Usually out of nowhere the history of a street or person who had never been mentioned before would have a three or four page background given in the middle of a conversation. Detail and exposition are tricky things. They have to be woven into stories so that the reader either doesn’t know that it’s there or doesn’t mind. Miss Lackey just pulls it out like the worst of movie narrators and throws down a boring background story. Characters thoughts are described painstakingly so that when they finally act it will make sense to the reader. Unfortunately by the time they do something the brain is so numb it’s hard to tell if anything even happened. The narrative voice is sometimes colloquial and speaking to the reader as if being spoken by a storyteller and sometimes it’s got a tight omniscient point of view in somebody’s head and other times it jumps around to characters mid paragraph.
The magic is the kind that I hate in fantasy, magic that does magical things that make the plot go where it’s supposed to and doesn’t do magical things in order to keep the plot where it’s going. There doesn’t seem to be any discernable reasoning behind why magic can and can’t do certain things – though the author tries to cover it up by supplying tidbits that hint that there is some logic behind it all. (I know, it’s magic. But even magic in a fantasy world has to have logic behind it.)
This book felt to me a lot like Terry Brooks does. It fills me with an intense apathy. I didn’t care what happened. The bad guy did horrible things that didn’t really even sound all that horrible. The good guys get attacked and fight bad guys and it never feels like there is any danger.
The characters are well imagined. I never got any of them confused. Miss Lackey seems to be well read on history and literature of the time period in which the book is set.
In all I would suggest you only read this book if you are a Lackey lackey or a Terry Brooks fan. If you are not a fan of her books, certainly don’t start with this one.
I had a slightly less grand experience. The story, in itself was good enough. What I think bothered me most was the lack of editing that went into the book. There were multiple typos on every page – sometimes entire words were missing. This could be the fault of the publisher for sloppy typesetting or any number of things and I could have overlooked them if there weren’t so many other things that could have also been fixed by a few attentive edits.
The word ‘indeed’ was used so often that it started to sound funny and there were a lot of over-written sentences that could have used a generous helping of editorial chopping. In particular was the exhaustive use of narrative exposition. Usually out of nowhere the history of a street or person who had never been mentioned before would have a three or four page background given in the middle of a conversation. Detail and exposition are tricky things. They have to be woven into stories so that the reader either doesn’t know that it’s there or doesn’t mind. Miss Lackey just pulls it out like the worst of movie narrators and throws down a boring background story. Characters thoughts are described painstakingly so that when they finally act it will make sense to the reader. Unfortunately by the time they do something the brain is so numb it’s hard to tell if anything even happened. The narrative voice is sometimes colloquial and speaking to the reader as if being spoken by a storyteller and sometimes it’s got a tight omniscient point of view in somebody’s head and other times it jumps around to characters mid paragraph.
The magic is the kind that I hate in fantasy, magic that does magical things that make the plot go where it’s supposed to and doesn’t do magical things in order to keep the plot where it’s going. There doesn’t seem to be any discernable reasoning behind why magic can and can’t do certain things – though the author tries to cover it up by supplying tidbits that hint that there is some logic behind it all. (I know, it’s magic. But even magic in a fantasy world has to have logic behind it.)
This book felt to me a lot like Terry Brooks does. It fills me with an intense apathy. I didn’t care what happened. The bad guy did horrible things that didn’t really even sound all that horrible. The good guys get attacked and fight bad guys and it never feels like there is any danger.
The characters are well imagined. I never got any of them confused. Miss Lackey seems to be well read on history and literature of the time period in which the book is set.
In all I would suggest you only read this book if you are a Lackey lackey or a Terry Brooks fan. If you are not a fan of her books, certainly don’t start with this one.
raemelle's review against another edition
4.0
I liked this one more than I liked the last few books in this series. This had much less reverse-snobbery than the others. Some towards the beginning when the character manages to both internally insult and praise the simple food she’s served, but it’s over pretty quickly. I liked that she starts out with the less-than-honorable intention of landing herself a sugar daddy. It made her a bit less of a sickly-sweet goodie-two-shoes. A bit.
It did run a little long at points. But overall kept my interest.
It did run a little long at points. But overall kept my interest.
sbbarnes's review against another edition
4.0
I enjoyed this one much much more than I thought I would. Puss in Boots is definitely not one of my favorite fairy tales, especially because it's a story about a liar scamming people, and that just stresses me out. So I was really pleasantly surprised. The story follows Ninette Dupond, a ballet dancer in the Paris opera. After being kicked out of the company for being too attractive to the star's gentleman friend, she almost starves and then her cat starts talking and brings her to Blackpool to impersonate a Russian ballerina no one has heard of.
This goes off without a hitch because the people running the theater in Blackpool are Elemental masters and can hear the cat, a point which is mentioned at least three times as a reason for choosing Blackpool. They bring in a fire master, Jonathon, who works as an illusionist. But the real Russian ballerina was eaten by a troll a long time ago and the troll is mad about identity theft, so starts doing a lot of evil stuff.
There are many shenanigans, including Ninette learning to shoot from her Scottish maid Ailse, Jonathon and a random Water master they got from somewhere sleuthing around, a fake shipwreck that occupies everyone even though they know it's fake, etc. It's fun. There are a few too many minor characters to keep track of - I feel like it would have been easier to just make Nigel a water master rather than bring in a romantic false lead that immediately gets forgotten with Alan.
I did enjoy the somewhat combative love story with Ninette and Jonathon, especially how at the end she chooses to encourage him in her way. Ninette did have a touch of the Mary-Sues in that she was well-loved by everyone for very little reason. But it does seem likely that she was tired of being looked down on by the Etoiles and would therefor treat others better, and it also matches her magic gift thingy. All in all a cute book. I liked the ballet stuff.
This goes off without a hitch because the people running the theater in Blackpool are Elemental masters and can hear the cat, a point which is mentioned at least three times as a reason for choosing Blackpool. They bring in a fire master, Jonathon, who works as an illusionist. But the real Russian ballerina was eaten by a troll a long time ago and the troll is mad about identity theft, so starts doing a lot of evil stuff.
There are many shenanigans, including Ninette learning to shoot from her Scottish maid Ailse, Jonathon and a random Water master they got from somewhere sleuthing around, a fake shipwreck that occupies everyone even though they know it's fake, etc. It's fun. There are a few too many minor characters to keep track of - I feel like it would have been easier to just make Nigel a water master rather than bring in a romantic false lead that immediately gets forgotten with Alan.
I did enjoy the somewhat combative love story with Ninette and Jonathon, especially how at the end she chooses to encourage him in her way. Ninette did have a touch of the Mary-Sues in that she was well-loved by everyone for very little reason. But it does seem likely that she was tired of being looked down on by the Etoiles and would therefor treat others better, and it also matches her magic gift thingy. All in all a cute book. I liked the ballet stuff.