This book draws the reader in with a scene of what I picture as an old Wild West store where people are lined up to receive rations of beans and wheat and corn. Supplies are running out and decisions have to be made for the greater good. We are introduced to the queen and her closest companion, someone free from the expectations of royalty. From that painful, dirty place, we travel to a studio, where tapestries are woven with moonlight. These extremes don't seem nearly as jarring as they could in another writer's hands. I look forward to seeing how the proposal at the end of the First Impression can change the circumstances for these hungry people.