Well, I liked this, but not quite as much as the first one. This provided some answers that were left out of the first book, but I really missed Emily & Dreadnought together. That really was the appeal and this book was so much more about Emily. Although, I did like her and even more I like Miss Jesczenka. ( )

Emily Edwards and Dreadnought Stanton are preparing both for marriage and the Investment ceremony that will formally make Mr. Stanton the Sophos of the Institute. A quick trip to visit her adopted father in Lost Pine results in Pap's confession that he performed magic on her as a child that removed her memories. He gives her a bottle containing her memories before the age of five, both the good and bad. Throughout the book Emily uncovers not only dark secrets about her fiancée, but also about Emily herself and her parents.

The first half of the novel was a bit disjointed, and I'll admit I missed Dreadnought horribly in this whole book. He hardly appeared, and the banter and relationship between he and Emily was what really made the first book enjoyable. But I have to admit the story flowed fairly well in this book and I really liked how it ended. I understand the author is preparing another in the series that will be set 30 years in the future and feature their children, and I am looking forward to reading the next book. Three and a half stars. ( )

It's been several years since I read the first book in this series, The Native Star, so the previous adventures of Emily Edwards and Dreadnought Stanton were far from fresh in my mind when I began The Hidden Goddess. Still, this novel almost stood alone and I could pick up the threads again without too much difficulty. M.K. Hobson has a knack for writing page turners, even when as in The Hidden Goddess the pacing is all off and the characters repeatedly fail to talk to one another in a manner that I normally find quite frustrating.

Emily is still a great main character: sympathetic, trying to do the right thing, but sometimes overwhelmed or making poor or selfish choices because she's running on limited information. Her relationship with Dreadnought Stanton was at once realistically drawn (falling in love and getting engaged is not the end point of a relationship) and deeply frustrating (the too-crowded final section of the book brings some revelations about Stanton's past that... well, if I were Emily, I'd have dumped him.)

One of the bigger flaws I remember from the first book is that the Native American characters featured seemed to be there solely to sacrifice themselves for white people. In this book, the big bad is the Aztec goddess Itztlacoliuhqui (who, I discovered when I googled, is actually a god in the Aztec pantheon, and whose gender swap appears to have been in the service of one of the more frustrating reveals at the end of the book), who is all savage blood lust and destructive urges, who is confined to a temple in Mexico that's strewn with dismembered body parts, and who is described as "dumb as a bag of hammers." Everyone who serves this goddess and actually does something to move her plans forward? A white American. Yeesh. ( )

While the first book in this series, 'Native Star' was a definite page-turner, it was not without its flaws. The sequel, 'The Hidden Goddess' seems to have remedied most of the things that annoyed me about the first one, while retaining the fun, fast pace of the story.

I did wish protagonist Emily got to use her magical powers a bit more in this installment, but I appreciated that both the earth magic and the romance felt less stereotypical here than previously. The evil Aztec cult was still a bit typical and one-dimensional, but I didn't end up minding too much.

If you're looking for light fantasy adventure with a dash of romance, definitely check out these books. I'll be continuing to follow this author. ( )

Actual rating: 3.5 stars

This was a sold four stars until the last nine or ten (maybe twenty) pages. There's such a thing as too rosy of an ending. I wanted a happy ending, but not an unbelievably happy, contrived one that relies on a dues es machina (several, actually). Still, there were some neat twists in this one, a lot of fascinating details on credomancy (I think Emily's press conference near the end is my favorite scene in both books), lots of action and humor and period details (and surprisingly little romance), so I enjoyed it heartily.

Full review to come. Probably. ( )