The four novellas in Quatrain are set in worlds created for: (ALERT some SPOILERS!!!)
"Archangel" (set in Samaria, just before Archangel): Flight follows a former angel-seeker who used to be in love with the Archangel Raphael and now is determined to keep her beautiful niece from making her same mistakes..... Not bad, I liked the characters, and it was well done but a bit predictable. Aunt protects her niece. Niece runs away with big bad wolf, ah no Archangel. Aunt goes to the rescue. Aunt blackmails Archangel. Archangel is furious. Aunt and niece is released from the mountain fortress."
3 stars to this one
"Heart of Gold" (set in the world of Heart of Gold): "Blood is the story of a fierce young gulden man who comes to the city to seek his mother, whom he hasn't seen since he was a boy and she ran away from his abusive father...... nice but unfinished I think. I liked the twist where his mom abandoned him to almost certain death, and then when he found her, she rejected him 'cause all gold men are evil'. And his relationship with the blue heiress was sweet, though it felt unfinished as interracial interaction was practically a tabu. And though I liked the community center volunteering/coaching thing as an idea, I thought it was not well done. It does not add to it that I'm not crazy about sports, a specially when it comes to blows and shoves as accepted... no REQUIRED standard of good player.
4.5 stars to this one
In Gold, (set in the world of Summers at Castle Auburn): a crown princess escapes the hazards of war by hiding among the fairylike aliora, where she encounters an altogether different sort of danger..... this is the worst story there! Likely one of the worst short stories I read. A self absorbed spoiled girl (cry baby princess) fleeing possibility of a war is offered refuge in a magical kingdom, where everything is sooo magical nobody ever wants to leave. She throws away all her talismans and potions to keep her from the enchantment, and falls under in less then 15 days! Then is rescued by her guardsmen who came to fetch her. Honestly I disliked her character, and I didnt care what hapened to her. She was vain, idle, spoiled creature if ever there lived one. Also the story was very weak, none of the other characters aside of the princes were fully flesh out.
is it possible to give NEGATIVE stars?
"Mystic and Rider"(set in the Twelve Houses, just before Mystic and Rider): in Flame, the mystic Senneth uses her magic to save a little girl, an act that wins her new friends but puts her own life at risk...... This was very good, the mystery and the little child with avakened powers endagering the village while the adult mysitc/witch is blamed for the fires (burning down half a town). The only thing I'm not sure is why is it called Mystic and rider, when the rider enters the town on the last page after all is resolved to offer her protection during her travels to the king. He is a ghost, an afterthought added to explain the title. He adds nothing to the story.
5 stars to this one
"Archangel" (set in Samaria, just before Archangel): Flight follows a former angel-seeker who used to be in love with the Archangel Raphael and now is determined to keep her beautiful niece from making her same mistakes..... Not bad, I liked the characters, and it was well done but a bit predictable. Aunt protects her niece. Niece runs away with big bad wolf, ah no Archangel. Aunt goes to the rescue. Aunt blackmails Archangel. Archangel is furious. Aunt and niece is released from the mountain fortress."
3 stars to this one
"Heart of Gold" (set in the world of Heart of Gold): "Blood is the story of a fierce young gulden man who comes to the city to seek his mother, whom he hasn't seen since he was a boy and she ran away from his abusive father...... nice but unfinished I think. I liked the twist where his mom abandoned him to almost certain death, and then when he found her, she rejected him 'cause all gold men are evil'. And his relationship with the blue heiress was sweet, though it felt unfinished as interracial interaction was practically a tabu. And though I liked the community center volunteering/coaching thing as an idea, I thought it was not well done. It does not add to it that I'm not crazy about sports, a specially when it comes to blows and shoves as accepted... no REQUIRED standard of good player.
4.5 stars to this one
In Gold, (set in the world of Summers at Castle Auburn): a crown princess escapes the hazards of war by hiding among the fairylike aliora, where she encounters an altogether different sort of danger..... this is the worst story there! Likely one of the worst short stories I read. A self absorbed spoiled girl (cry baby princess) fleeing possibility of a war is offered refuge in a magical kingdom, where everything is sooo magical nobody ever wants to leave. She throws away all her talismans and potions to keep her from the enchantment, and falls under in less then 15 days! Then is rescued by her guardsmen who came to fetch her. Honestly I disliked her character, and I didnt care what hapened to her. She was vain, idle, spoiled creature if ever there lived one. Also the story was very weak, none of the other characters aside of the princes were fully flesh out.
is it possible to give NEGATIVE stars?
"Mystic and Rider"(set in the Twelve Houses, just before Mystic and Rider): in Flame, the mystic Senneth uses her magic to save a little girl, an act that wins her new friends but puts her own life at risk...... This was very good, the mystery and the little child with avakened powers endagering the village while the adult mysitc/witch is blamed for the fires (burning down half a town). The only thing I'm not sure is why is it called Mystic and rider, when the rider enters the town on the last page after all is resolved to offer her protection during her travels to the king. He is a ghost, an afterthought added to explain the title. He adds nothing to the story.
5 stars to this one
This was a deeply disappointing collection for me. It doesn't work for two reasons. The first reason is that the initial volume in any of Shinn's series always blows me away, then each successive volume is only half as good as the one before. Two of the four novellas in this volume are set in the worlds of Shinn's two longest series, and those two novellas have reached only homeopathically good territory. The second reason is that I just don't think Shinn is capable of writing stories with the sort of thematic freight she attempted here -- the two non-series novellas are drawn from two of her more message-heavy novels, and the two series novellas attempt to address some of the seriously thorny issues inherent but not really addressed in her previous world-building.
Still, it's the sort of volume that if you are a Sharon Shinn completist, you simply have to read it. And since her prose is always pleasant and easy to read it goes very, very quickly.
Flight (set in Samaria, just before Archangel)
This was by far the worst story in the bunch. It features the return of Raphael as the Biggest of all Big Bads, doing evil just because he can; a really, really, really clunky and histrionic speech about the evils of a system where women are only valued because they can produce angel babies; and a completely forced romance. I rather wish I could erase my memory of it.
Blood (set in the world of Heart of Gold)
The novel this is based on is one of the few by Shinn that I have never re-read; though I don't remember disliking it nothing about it ever stood out enough in my memory that I wanted to revisit it. So this was the one case where I could not tell what information was new for the novella and what was a reference to the novel, which probably made it feel fresher than it would have otherwise. It too features some clunky speachifying on the evils of a patriarchal system, but there is a greater focus on the budding friendship between Kerk and Jalci, a very Hollywood but still somewhat heartwarming set of scenes at a sort of shelter for abused women and their children, and an actual honest-to-goodness moment of heartbreak and moral ambiguity. That moment gets completely ruined a moment later when Jalci recasts everything as black and white, but it made the story worthwhile for me. I think this was the best of the bunch.
Gold (set in the world of Summers at Castle Auburn)
I think this novella would actually work better for people who have not read the novel. If you have not read the novel, it's a fairly straightforward story about the dangers of living in fairyland -- not a particularly memorable entry into that canon of literature, but I happen to like those stories with their depictions of dangerous beauty. If you have read the novel, as I have (though not tremendously recently), something about the story just doesn't quite seem to match what came before -- I spent the whole time trying to figure out what on earth happened in the interim to twist the recurring characters' motivations to this result. The story also featured a tremendously whiny teenage girl protagonist, and again the romance seemed forced.
Flame (set in the Twelve Houses, just before Mystic and Rider)
Senneth is my second-favorite of all of Shinn's characters (right after Jovieve in Wrapt in Crystal) and Shinn went a fair way to ruining her for me in this story. Here she is wishy-washy and whiny or self-righteous by turns. Because of the difference in her character, I assumed that the story was set several years before Mystic and Rider; I would believe that this teenage Senneth would grow into the wonderful Senneth I so loved. Unfortunately, Shinn then made it explicit that Senneth went straight from the events of this story into the events of Mystic and Rider, so my interpretation was invalidated and I was left feeling merely annoyed. Plus the resolution was completely predictable (which is problematic because the story is set up as a pseudo-mystery rather than a romance) and again there were far too many soapbox moments. (It's bad to burn witches. I know this already.)
Still, it's the sort of volume that if you are a Sharon Shinn completist, you simply have to read it. And since her prose is always pleasant and easy to read it goes very, very quickly.
Flight (set in Samaria, just before Archangel)
This was by far the worst story in the bunch. It features the return of Raphael as the Biggest of all Big Bads, doing evil just because he can; a really, really, really clunky and histrionic speech about the evils of a system where women are only valued because they can produce angel babies; and a completely forced romance. I rather wish I could erase my memory of it.
Blood (set in the world of Heart of Gold)
The novel this is based on is one of the few by Shinn that I have never re-read; though I don't remember disliking it nothing about it ever stood out enough in my memory that I wanted to revisit it. So this was the one case where I could not tell what information was new for the novella and what was a reference to the novel, which probably made it feel fresher than it would have otherwise. It too features some clunky speachifying on the evils of a patriarchal system, but there is a greater focus on the budding friendship between Kerk and Jalci, a very Hollywood but still somewhat heartwarming set of scenes at a sort of shelter for abused women and their children, and an actual honest-to-goodness moment of heartbreak and moral ambiguity. That moment gets completely ruined a moment later when Jalci recasts everything as black and white, but it made the story worthwhile for me. I think this was the best of the bunch.
Gold (set in the world of Summers at Castle Auburn)
I think this novella would actually work better for people who have not read the novel. If you have not read the novel, it's a fairly straightforward story about the dangers of living in fairyland -- not a particularly memorable entry into that canon of literature, but I happen to like those stories with their depictions of dangerous beauty. If you have read the novel, as I have (though not tremendously recently), something about the story just doesn't quite seem to match what came before -- I spent the whole time trying to figure out what on earth happened in the interim to twist the recurring characters' motivations to this result. The story also featured a tremendously whiny teenage girl protagonist, and again the romance seemed forced.
Flame (set in the Twelve Houses, just before Mystic and Rider)
Senneth is my second-favorite of all of Shinn's characters (right after Jovieve in Wrapt in Crystal) and Shinn went a fair way to ruining her for me in this story. Here she is wishy-washy and whiny or self-righteous by turns. Because of the difference in her character, I assumed that the story was set several years before Mystic and Rider; I would believe that this teenage Senneth would grow into the wonderful Senneth I so loved. Unfortunately, Shinn then made it explicit that Senneth went straight from the events of this story into the events of Mystic and Rider, so my interpretation was invalidated and I was left feeling merely annoyed. Plus the resolution was completely predictable (which is problematic because the story is set up as a pseudo-mystery rather than a romance) and again there were far too many soapbox moments. (It's bad to burn witches. I know this already.)
