Title: The Bewitching Tale of Stormy Gale
Author: Christine Bell
Series: Stormy Gale #2
Genre: Steampunk, Adult, Historical-fiction
Expected publication: May 28th 2012 by Carina Press
Plot: London, 1841
There I was, retired from time pirating, enjoying a full if somewhat conventional life as a wife and mother. Then a chance encounter with a stranger drew me back into a world I’d thought I’d left, quite literally, in the past. From his odd behavior and even odder answers to my questions, I knew Phineas Grubb was up to something. I should have trusted my instincts—before he pulled out a time-travel mechanism and dragged my brother, Bacon, back with him…
Salem, 1698
The infamous Witch Trials may have ended a few years earlier, but the people of Salem are still pretty touchy about outsiders that appear in town as if by magic. Thanks to Grubb, my brother’s been accused of witchcraft and thrown in jail. Now it’s up to me and my husband, Dev, to save Bacon’s bacon before the hysteria starts up again, and the course of history is altered forever…
Review: I wanted to like this book so much, but in the end, I just couldn’t. I felt like Bell took a beautifully crafted short novella and ruined it by creating a sequel.
What I strongly disliked:
- Stormy changed from a strong, kick-ass heroine and leader into a dependent wife. She then attempted to redeem herself by saying he needed to stay behind and it was her love for him that made her say this, but really that’s not right. If you love somebody and after the problems they face in the first book about trust and leaving one and other behind, this must prove to her to be the wrong route to take.
- There is a great revelation at the end about Stormy and her past that is really corny and stupid in my opinion.
- Her past is suddenly invented in this instalment. Granted, the first novel isn’t long enough to really include a past, but it ruins the book to suddenly start inventing one.
- The book dragged for too much, I felt in Bell extending the length, she prolonged the torture. The first part had an unnecessary and extensive build up.
- There wasn’t nearly enough Dev/Stormy interaction to make it enjoyable and we saw very little of her life that had supposedly become ‘normal’ at the end of the first novel.
- Dev lost his ‘loony’ status and became too normal and boring. He held none of the previous excitement we’d seen because he was now a responsible husband.
- There wasn’t nearly enough of the ‘steampunk’ genre for it to constitute as a real ‘steampunk’ novel that I imagine and it bordered more on the history kind of thing.
- It reminded me of Arthur Miller’s ‘The Crucible’ which I abhor because of the Salem witch trial context.
What I did like:
- Dev was still part of the book and he became a integral part to the story line as to save Bacon.
- Bacon gained a happily ever after.
There is so little I can say which actually made this book entertaining. By the time I was halfway through, I’d reached the point where banging my head against a brick wall felt the only resolve. I wanted to scream and shout at the characters stupidity and delete half the word count.
Overall, this book was a huge disappointment and I felt that Bell should have stuck with one instalment for Stormy Gale because that was truly a wonderful little story!
Read the first one, but expect to be disappointed with this new instalment. I’d tell you not to waste your money on the second instalment of Stormy Gale.
*The publisher provided me with this ebook for review, via NetGalley*
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