I loved the high-quality fantasy of this book. I did not read the first book, and that would have been best, to see what came before, but I was able to follow along fine as it was.
The first fifty or so pages, I was a little lost, because we were simply seeing some relatively elite people living their lives and telling their stories or legends, and I didn't know how that would connect to anything. But then we finally meet our heroine from the first book, and our story actually begins.
I very much liked the demons or spirits in this book--they felt very real and Old World-y, and that was cool. The psychology was interesting.
If I didn't know a little about the subject, I would just assume this was set in some sort of 19th-century Russian never-never land. But the book talks about "Rus', " and in college I studied what our Russian history classes called "Kievan Rus." Basically, medieval Russia. So, once you picture that it adds to the whole environment of the story.
The first fifty or so pages, I was a little lost, because we were simply seeing some relatively elite people living their lives and telling their stories or legends, and I didn't know how that would connect to anything. But then we finally meet our heroine from the first book, and our story actually begins.
I very much liked the demons or spirits in this book--they felt very real and Old World-y, and that was cool. The psychology was interesting.
If I didn't know a little about the subject, I would just assume this was set in some sort of 19th-century Russian never-never land. But the book talks about "Rus', " and in college I studied what our Russian history classes called "Kievan Rus." Basically, medieval Russia. So, once you picture that it adds to the whole environment of the story.