Chime has a unique gift of being a Shapemage, despite the fact that she wants to do nothing more than remain in her orchard home. However, the King's Advisor mage finds her out and takes her with her back to the castle, to train as a Shapemage and to marry the heir to the throne, Prince Muller.

Nothing goes as planned, when Chime's classmate and a long lost heir usurp the roles once set aside for Muller and Chime. But just because she is not the queen-to-be doesn't mean Chime has no more obligations to the new king and queen and all of Arsondale.

A light read. Don't read it expecting to fall in love with the book, but it can be enjoyable if you're not expecting too much.

The power of the Shapemage was well thought out, and very unique. It took awhile to understand, and I still don't completely comprehend what the minimum the reader would probably like to know to enjoy the climatic end of the story.

It moved very slowly. The author spent too much time building up the relationships between the 4 main characters, and only briefly touched on the fact that there was a more serious problem, the invasion of Arsondale, until the end, when it happened and ended rather quickly. I also didn't like that 3 of the 4 Shapemages that made up the main characters had unusual twists in their powers that nobody had ever heard of before. That 3 completely different alterations of this magic that the country has studied and known of for years suddenly appeared in the 3 main characters at the same time just didn't feel realistic to me.

Go back to the store and find another book. It's not that the author has a bad style or anything, it just takes a different sort of reader to appreciate it, I guess.

Confused at times, and I got bored with the lengthy descriptions and long paragraphs in several scenes and just skimmed.

Is definitely a romantic at heart. She spent so much time building up the relationship between Chime and Muller, and Jarid and Iris that it kind of choked out the rest of the story.

If you like learning about another authors idea of a magic that could work, the Shapemage gifts are actually interesting to read about. Maybe you can understand it better than I could.

As I've stated before, it's confusing, it moves very slowly. I was also disappointed in so many things left unfinished. For instance, Anvil's obsession with Chime was never explained. I was also irritated with how the author seemed to write things just because they sounded good. For a few scenes, Jarid was "insane" and wild, but in a matter of days he has calmed himself, regained his sight, hearing, etc. And I was irked by the sudden manifestation of the three unique twists on the Shapemage gifts appearing at the same time.

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Created Oct 08, 2005 at 1:02am • Submit your own review...