Review: love, imagination and steam all rolled into a story that reacquaints us with the characters from before while giving us new char
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 03 2, 2014
The seventh installment in Marie Hall’s Kingdom series has introduced us to the bad boys of fairy tales, and found them their true loves all with the help of a reluctant, yet ever-caring fairy godmother in Danica.  This is one of those series that takes the favored tales from childhood and finds new depths and characters to appreciate, all while maintaining the fun of the original reads.While this book will stand alone, having read the earlier book Moon’s Flower will help to improve your understanding of the story, and if you are a fan of fairy tales reworked for adults, pick up all of the titles in the series.  It is a perfect escape to lands far far away!Alice and the Mad Hatter have a daughter, Chrysalis who inherited her mother’s beauty and her father’s madness.  And while Hatter is mad, Chrysalis manages to take that madness to a whole different level: a curse has befallen her, and to stop the destruction of all that is known, she must be stopped.Enter Aeric, the huntsman who is charged with the salvation of the Kingdom: to do so he will travel through the realms in search of Chrysalis.  Aeric is, like all of the men in Kingdom, an emotionally tortured soul, without faith that there is a love for him.  Hall is a master of the slightly mad, entirely twisted story laden with depth and insertions of characters old and new.  While Aeric is chasing Chrysalis, he is aided by Lissa: a winsome beauty that has intrigued him, yet the stories of the one he hunts have him enthralled.Several twists are built into the telling of the story, and at times readers will feel a tiny bit mad themselves with the unusual revelations, fantastical world building and the sense of familiarity that pervades the story, even as the premise is wholly unique and fresh. This set of stories is based on the children of the original bad boys, and the first in the next generation stories is wonderful.  Exactly what I hope to find when I open a book by this author: love, imagination and steam all rolled into a story that reacquaints us with the characters from before while giving us new characters to love!I purchased a copy of this title for my own library. I was not compensated for this review: all conclusions are my own responsibility.