Book #33: Blood Rose Rebellion by Rosalyn Eves

Rosalyn Eves, the author of this book, was my Writing Fellows boss and professor while I was at BYU! I spent a lot of time working with her for a year, and I am Facebook friends with her still and have seen all of her posts about her book being published, etc. I think it's SO cool that she did this, something that she's always wanted to do--and it's inspired me. I have always thought I'm not much of a creative writer, but who knows? Maybe someday I'll have a great idea for a story that I'll want to write too.

This book, set in Victorian times, is about Anna Arden, who is Barren of magic in a family full of magicians. She can't cast any spells and actually messes them up, breaks them, when she comes across them. She eventually gets sent to her ancestral home of Hungary with her grandmother, where she begins to get involved with the revolutionaries wanting to overthrow the government and the Circle, the leaders of the magical world. It turns out that her lack of powers ends up being very powerful indeed, and she is central to that revolution.

My favorite thing about this book was the setting. It felt so fresh to read something set in Eastern Europe--how many Regency/Victorian-era novels do you read set in England, and how many do you read set in Hungary? I also really liked how the book used real historical events and superimposed this magical world on top of them, changing why or how things happened to fit this other storyline. I thought the magical world had a lot of potential, and I liked how Rosalyn set up the world. The writing was also really beautiful and distinctive. I did wish that we could get a little more from the characters--I never really got attached to any of them, and I'm not sure why. I felt like they were all kind of cardboard characters, doing what they were supposed to but not having any feelings while they did it. I don't know what would have made them any better, though; there wasn't anything specific that stood out in their characterization. But overall, it was a worthwhile read and since this is the beginning of a trilogy, I'm sure I'll be checking out the other two.