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communi_kateI did not expect to like this book.
I certainly didn't expect to love it the way I did. Passion Play begins with a standard fantasy trope: a poor little rich girl is betrothed against her will, exercises her strong and slightly anachronistic will, and runs away. So far, so bleh.
But then Therez, the protagonist, gets into trouble, gets a new name, and gets a job as an accountant in a brothel. And then the book really hits its stride.
I'm not going to give anything away, but this is character driven fantasy at its best. Secondary-world character driven fantasy with a female protagonist and an intricate magic system-the sort of book I love. Yet I nearly didn't pick it up. Why not?
The problem, Dear Reader, was the cover. It's beautiful, but it shows a not inconsiderable amount of tit and together with the title gives a really erroneous impression of the book. The Amazon review has a lot of comments along the lines of 'I was expecting a fantasy Fifty Shades and then I got four hundred pages of BROTHEL ACCOUNTS WHERE IS THE SEXXING?' From the title I was expecting something racy, maybe set in a fake medieval Europe with the guild plays or something to do with a fantasy Oberammergau.
What I got rocked enough that I immediately bought the sequel and all the short stories the author has ever written. So it's not fifty shades, and that's a good thing. It's a great thing. Buy this book!
I certainly didn't expect to love it the way I did. Passion Play begins with a standard fantasy trope: a poor little rich girl is betrothed against her will, exercises her strong and slightly anachronistic will, and runs away. So far, so bleh.
But then Therez, the protagonist, gets into trouble, gets a new name, and gets a job as an accountant in a brothel. And then the book really hits its stride.
I'm not going to give anything away, but this is character driven fantasy at its best. Secondary-world character driven fantasy with a female protagonist and an intricate magic system-the sort of book I love. Yet I nearly didn't pick it up. Why not?
The problem, Dear Reader, was the cover. It's beautiful, but it shows a not inconsiderable amount of tit and together with the title gives a really erroneous impression of the book. The Amazon review has a lot of comments along the lines of 'I was expecting a fantasy Fifty Shades and then I got four hundred pages of BROTHEL ACCOUNTS WHERE IS THE SEXXING?' From the title I was expecting something racy, maybe set in a fake medieval Europe with the guild plays or something to do with a fantasy Oberammergau.
What I got rocked enough that I immediately bought the sequel and all the short stories the author has ever written. So it's not fifty shades, and that's a good thing. It's a great thing. Buy this book!
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Date: 2013-05-07 01:11 am (UTC)I just order the book the from the library, thanks for the rec!
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Date: 2013-05-10 09:25 am (UTC)Just finished the sequel and to be honest I was a bit disappointed. There's more magic (the first book is more into fantasy politics) but the sequel separates the main pair of charaters straight after spending the first book setting them up and spends more time with new characters. I wanted to see more of Ilse being awesome. There is a third book in progress, so maybe the series will pick up.