Review: Really good fantasy
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 04 7, 2014
I admit I was a bit hesitant.  Sarah writes great SF, but my experience with SF writers who cross over to fantasy hasn't been great.  I shouldn't have worried.  The plot is complex but not convoluted, the action starts from the first (ok, the second) page, the main characters are interesting and three-dimensional, and the plot twists are, well, twisty.  (The one twist I spotted early on gets resolved about halfway through the book.  It was like Sarah was saying, "Yeah, this one's so simple, I won't leave you hanging.")  Not every writer understands the reader this well.  There's light romance in varying favors, but no steamy scenes, thanks very much.Very basically, the book is an interesting take on the "many parallel worlds with differing levels of magic" idea.  A young woman from our Earth gets pulled to an alternate of much higher magic, the British empire is the dominant political entity, magicians abound, fae and other magical creatures hatch plots, aristocrats have varying degrees of ethics, and the good guys and bad guys have tea like civilized people.  Nicely, Sarah didn't get into overmuch detail on the world building; we get a feel for the complexity of the universe without being dragged through endless details, with a hint of steampunk.I'm very much hoping this is the beginning of a series.