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Aug 14, 2014LauraSteinert rated this title 5 out of 5 stars
A wonderful second book--please read them in order--that prepares us for the rest of the series. Dobbs is a very addictive series, and I can't read them fast enough! Lessons in patience, empathy, and listening to that quiet inner-voice we all ignore, then wish we hadn't. Although I would say this is adult fiction, I would have been obsessed with it as a 13 year old, too. (Much better than vampires who stalk little girls, but still a tiny bit of the magical that increases in later stories. Winspear brings a scholarly background to the scenes, the class struggle, and the plight of the poor and women in the wake of The Great War, but it is not a distraction for this coming of age story. (There should be a nice literary term the equivalent of bildungsroman for women characters.) Maisie's growth through each novel (and a novel it truly is), and her sense of right and wrong make me a little ashamed of how little effort I have put in over the last 50 years at becoming my best possible self. This should make it to the literary cannon, but it will not as the woman character and the mystical elements are just not "male" enough.