Aug09: Well, she is just one consistently awesome author.

Characters: Loved them. Had just enough development and delightful personalities.
Plot: Just enough humor to mix with the not-really dangerous danger.
Style: So very awesome. I know it's not really 'Old London', but it still makes you feel like it :) ( )

This book turned out better than I thought it was. I bought the book a little unsure and was pleasantly surprised. It is about a girl, Kim, wh lives on the streets of London. She is paid to break into a magician's wagon. There she meets Mairelon the Magician. Reluctantly she travels with him and leans his magic is real. ( )

This book is definitely not as bad as the cover suggests. Even though I like Wrede's work, I was a bit skeptical about this novel, because the cover gave me the impression that it would be taking place in the Wild West, and that the main character would have a sketchy mustache. Fortunately, both suspicions proved false - the book is set in Regency London (or thereabouts), and it follows the adventures of Kim, a girl (dressed as a boy) who lives on the streets and used to earn her living as a thief. When someone hires her to break into Mairelon's wagon and report back on its contents, she sees no harm in it, until she discovers that Mairelon is a real magician. Soon she finds herself tagging along on Mairelon's adventure. He's looking for a set of objects that contain magical properties - he was accused of stealing them himself five years ago, and now he wants to solve the mystery and clear his name. Unfortunately, he's not the only one after these objects, and the adventure becomes more and more dangerous with each fact they uncover. I thought this was a very well-done story. There's a lot of action and humor, and the period detail is satisfying. Kim's slang is a bit cumbersome at times, and there are a lot of secondary characters whom it's sometimes hard to keep straight. Other than that, I enjoyed this book a lot.

Kim is an adolescent female waif passing as a boy in London who gets caught up in the adventures of a travelling stage magician. This is a comedy of errors meets YA Regency almost-romance and makes use of a great deal of thieves cant (slang). I was less pleased with it than other LT readers indicate they were. It is slight fun but not enthralling. ( )

It was no Enchanted Forest Chronicles, but it was a fun story, nonetheless. 17-year-old Kim, a girl disguised as a boy, is a thief in Regency England, until she gets caught burgling an actual magician's wagon. But instead of being arrested or turned into a frog, Mairelon the Magician invites her to become his apprentice.

What follows is a madcap adventure, reminiscent of, say, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, with several different parties, each with their own motivation, racing to be the first to collect the Saltash Platter and put together an entire set of magical artifacts. It's heavily flavored with 1800s English street cant, but it's easy enough to figure out once you've been reading for a while.

I've put the sequel on my list. Maybe I'll be able to talk my youngest into trying these, now that he's suddenly rediscovered reading. ( )