Phoenix and ashes (original 2004; edition 2004)

A steampunk Cinderella who has to rely on her own determination, hard work and magic instead of on singing mice and sewing birds manages to triumph over a wicked magician who just happens to be her stepmother. This is my favorite of the Elemental Masters series. I enjoy the historically accurate detail of WWI England, and I applaud the author's return to the roots of the Cinderella story, where the heroine is far from passive. There's a bit of gore, a lot of darkness, and a Prince Charming who has his own obstacles to overcome.

The only reason this gets four stars instead of five is that having an auxiliary evil magician named Warrick Locke is just too cutesy for me to stomach. Otherwise, it's a superb book. ( )

This is definitely a notch above The Gates of Sleep, and even Serpent's Shadow, although it's still a flawed book. The characters are more engaging than usual, and while the villain is generically evil, she gets much less screen time then her passive machinations, which prove to be an excellent foil. The plot hews fairly closely to Cinderella, but making the Prince an injured soldier with PTSD offers rather more depth than the role usually gets.

The biggest problem, as with all of these, is the pacing. It really feels like there's a novella's worth of story here stretched out to novel length by shopping trips and lengthy, only mildly interesting dissertations on the nature of magic. The climax comes rather all at once, and doesn't feel particularly satisfying. As much as I like Lackey, this series shows the gaps in her skillset. ( )

I waffled about how to rate this one because I've been reading some other things simultaneously that were more challenging. I run into this problem from time to time. Do you rate a book more highly if it attempts to do something quite ambitious and doesn't quite succeed, or if it has more modest ambitions and fulfills them admirably?

This falls into the more modest ambitions/ considerable success category. In the end I decided to give it four stars because as long as you know what you are getting into from the outset it is going to give you just about exactly what you are hoping for. And with more than 100 books to her credit, if you don't know what you are getting into with Mercedes Lackey at this point, you just aren't paying attention.

So. This is a book to curl up with when you want a little adventure, a little romance, a little magic, a hero and heroine to root for, some villains to hiss at, and a happy ending to round it all out. Its a probably not going to shock and amaze you unless you are very very innocent, and yes the characters can be a little one dimensional, but its a solidly crafted entertainment.

It reminds me a little bit of the ghost stories I loved to read when I was a kid. They needed to be scary but not too scary, and there needed to be somebody I could identify with, and some friendly folks, and a baaad person, a few mild jokes and preferably a nice horse. Okay this lacks the nice horse... ( )

Retelling of Cinderella story with lots of references to tarot, which is somewhat creepy. Not that creepy is bad. ( )

Quite good. I like the way it's nearly perfectly the Cinderella story, but it actually makes sense, rather than being fairy-tale style where things happen and no one ever questions or thinks about them. Here the 'wicked stepmother' making a servant of Eleanor actually makes sense in context, as does the ball, Eleanor's dress and having to run... lots of things. Also, I really like Eleanor and Reggie, and it's fun to see Maya and hear of Andrew Pike and others. One odd thing - I remembered her studying from the Tarot, and was beginning to wonder if I was remembering the wrong book before it showed up. It doesn't appear until very late in the story, and then fades away relatively quickly for something that made such an impression on my memory of the book. Overall - pretty darn good. ( )