I didn't enjoy this book.

You are given an awful lot of information at the beginning and I felt that I spent the rest of the book playing catch up and trying to figure out how it all fit together.

I imagine that it would make more sense, to me anyway, if I read it again.

This is a book where you dive head first into a fantasy world, and you have to pay full attention or you ll miss the important part.
I loved the idea of the book but where I felt the characters should have been as confused as me they seemed to just accept and know the answers. This made it a little hard going in places and I think a second read would be much more enjoyable!

If you love a little supernatural magic and mystery, you will love this. If other worlds exist, somewhere between mythology, religion, folklore and reality, this might well be how it works. Luckily for this reader, not a searcher-out of fantasy writing, this story draws us into the world of faerie and demon slowly and gently, immersing us one careful step at a time in a parallel world, where bliss can be found, but a dark side lurks - just as all of the best fairytales through the ages have taught us.

I really struggled with this. It mixes the faeries and demons of fantasy with a thriller giving lots of mentions to the Da Vinci Code in amongst the many lovely literature references and I don’t feel it did justice to any of them. Confusing switches between the 3 left me floundering and I put it down thinking I was going to give up several times. There was something engaging about the characters which I would enjoy but then it seemed to jump and I felt I’d missed an important plot reference. Not for me I’m afraid although I do enjoy all 3 genres.

Unfortunately I could not finish reading this book as some themes and elements in it didn't sit well with me. I imagined this to be a different story from the blurb, and I wish there had been a warning of some sort for some of the things contained within.

Regardless, I think the prose is really beautiful and the characters well fleshed-out! I'm sure many people who like a darker, thrilling read will enjoy this book greatly.

An epic story of revenge, retribution and the quest to find a magical book combine to make an epic fantasy that twists and turns to the very end.

I feel like this is going to be a marmite book of sorts. With its intricate interwoven stories and mythologies it flits between genres and styles throughout the plot. One part fantasy, one part thriller and also part literary fiction there's references to everything from Arthurian legend to classic novels. It's weird, convoluted and confusing. The plot meanders, not really knowing where it's going and never really letting the reader know what's going on.

I'll admit I seem to fall in the category that wasnt keen on this. I struggled to get through the lack of action, and was consistently unsure of what was going on. Plot points fall off the face of the earth, nothing is really concluded well and the writing felt clunky as a result.

Interesting ideas, but too long winded and convoluted for me.

I really enjoyed reading this book, in all its full-length glory, from murder mystery to fantasy and faery world, it had me gripped all the way through.

Taryn is a woman with a past, and secrets she chooses to reveal when it suits her and not anyone else. She has many encounters in the book as it explores her and her family's history and their connection to the deepest secrets of gods and faeries.

Taryn's first love is of words, of books and of libraries, and this allows the author to play extensively within the book, whether you find yourself in a modern-day murder thriller, a piece of historical fiction, or a history of faeries and angels, while the author is working madly underneath the surface to hold the threads of story powerfully together.

Altogether the book wanders and weaves and brings its stories together skilfully and with meaning, very enjoyable to read.

Many thanks to the author, publishers and Netgalley for a free ARC of this ebook.
This is a book is a very long one. I can't say I enjoyed it, I didnt. Its a convoluted tale, and it takes some following, but the characters are well constructed, and it shows incredible imagination. There's no denying the quality of the writing and I wouldn't want to disrespect the author by giving this a low star rating just because it wasn't to my personal taste.

This book started with a lot of info dumping, then I found it hard to follow. It seemed to skip over events and had some real continuity problems. The glowing reviews from authors I respect kept me reading past where I might have given up otherwise.

Unfortunately I just couldn't get into it. Every time I picked it up I couldn't connect what I was reading to what I had read before. Normally I get right back into a story, as if I had been reading continuously. This one just didn't keep my attention.

I seem to be the only one for whom this book has been such heavy going that I have, reluctantly, decided to give up! It seems like I have spent hours and hours to get to this point, as I would normally read at least 25% before giving up on the very few books that defeat me. In this case, having checked how far I had waded, it turns out that to be just 14%.

My apologies to the author but you have defeated me. My rating of 3 Stars should be seen as a neutral rating.

I loved the premise but this one wasn't for me, sadly. Although I enjoyed it in places I found the story really hard to follow and the ending left me more confused than ever.

This is very thinky epic fantasy and will not be for everyone, but I loved how it was put together. The way it layers themes and links it all with the character development. It’s exquisitely well written too.

An interesting tale, where magical realism is blended with murder mystery. The author obviously made a conscious decision not to explain things in too much detail so as not to interrupt the flow, but this does occasionally leave you feeling slightly lost.

Also, even though a large portion of the book is set in the UK, the author uses several terms which aren’t British, which is very jarring.

I was so looking forward to reading this, as I love Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, as well as His Dark Materials. But I'm afraid this did not deliver on either count. I did find it intriguing to start with, especially when the Police and MI5 got involved, but then things got weird and it lost me. There were some good bits though and some of the writing is excellent. Just not for me - sorry.

I have mixed feelings about this book, there are parts that I really enjoyed when I felt the story was brilliantly written and was flowing nicely, and then there were other parts that seemed to stall a bit, and I lost my way. Overall though it is enjoyable and if you like fantasy adventures then you will enjoy this one.

I'm actually going to struggle to review this one.

So much to like,yet I found myself confused A LOT.
thinking I'd skipped pages,or just not paid enough attention.
But I hadn't.
It's a long book too,so that feeling too often wasnt great.
But I liked a lot of it.
Taryn was a great character,I really liked her dad and what MUST be lord of the rings references. It talks about books and libraries a good deal.

If you like a bit of fantasy fiction,its definitely worth a go

There were points when I loved this novel and felt entirely immersed and others where I felt that, like the characters, I had fallen through into another world and missed entire chapters. Reading the book was at times beautiful but ultimately a confusing experience.
I really liked the way the characters were drawn and the use of language and description is exceptional but I found the plot hard to follow and from around two thirds in I found it harder and harder to remember where I was when I opened the book to carry on reading. This might be because I am not used to the genre, it being something that only appeals to me with a premise such as the Absolute Book- I think that positioning it as General Fiction, as it was in netgalley, rather than Sci-Fi or Fantasy does the book a disservice. If I had known that it was a fantasy novel, I probably wouldn't have requested it, which would have been a shame for me as it is a beautiful book, even if I didn't entirely gel with it but I imagine in the hands of a passionate Fantasy reader it would be much more appreciated.