The Midnight Queen: A Rambling Review (Adult)

The Midnight Queen by Sylvia Izzo Hunter

This book was enjoyable enough, but not amazing. I liked the Regency-plus-magic setting (as I pretty much always do!), but I would have appreciated more knowledge of how this alternate version of Britain came to be (and a little more political/geographical explanation would also have been good). The main characters of Gray and Sophie were cute together, but I didn't feel a whole lot of chemistry between them; their relationship was an it's-so-obvious-it's-staring-everyone-in-the-face-so-why-can't-you-see-it kind of romance. Basically, you could see it a mile away and know it was inevitably going to happen at some point. The plot consisted of a LOT of conversations, and in my opinion, not enough action/suspense. There was some intrigue, of course, but it wasn't really the sort the reader can try to figure out, because we weren't given enough information. Things do get more eventful right towards the end, but even then, I thought the climactic scenes were a little confusing and didn't provide the pay-off I wanted considering the less-than-eventful lead-up to them.

In terms of characterization, Gray and Sophie were both a little too good, in a way, for my taste. They are both intelligent, loyal, well-liked, and (generally) well-meaning individuals; perhaps it was just that they weren't given enough weaknesses to make them feel more authentic. The third-person tense may also have made it a little more difficult to really get inside their heads and understand them as people.

I also think the villains could have been more villainous (they didn't seem that sinister, except perhaps by sheer number of them) and their characters expanded upon. I had difficulty keeping them straight, there were so many!

That said, it was a pleasant, comfortable, familiar kind of read. The language used evoked an older era, and yet was usually not particularly dense or archaic, making for fairly easy reading.