Review: Reserved for the Cat by Mercedes Lackey

I've read this book so many times I can practically recite it, but it just gets better and better with every reread. I wasn't actually going to post about it here, but it's given me so much pleasure of the years that I felt I kind of owed it a review. Mercedes Lackey's Elemental Masters series is possibly my ultimate favourite of all fantasy books. Each one is based on a different fairytale and set in an alternate England in the early 1900s. Instead of your typical fairytale however, Lackey uses elemental magic to create her wonderful worlds and stories. Reserved for the Cat is, in my opinion, the best of them all.

Plot summary - Based loosely on the tale of Puss in Boots, Reserved for the Cat takes place in 1910 in an alternate London. A young dancer, penniless and desperate, is sure she is going mad when a cat begins talking to her mind-to-mind. But her feline guide, actually an Elemental Earth Spirit, helps her to impersonate a famous Russian ballerina and achieve the success she’s been dreaming of. Unfortunately she also attracts the attention of another Elemental Spirit— a far more threatening one— and the young dancer must once again turn to her mysteriously powerful four-legged furry friend.

God, I love this book. I can't explain how much without taking a photo of myself in the process of actually licking my battered copy. I admit to not really recognising the fairytale it originated from at first, but that's hardly a fundamental issue. The fairytale link is more of an interesting aside than anything concrete. The other books in the series do follow the original stories more closely, but so what? :)

So. Ninette is a semi-successful ballet dancer in Paris until she accidentally offends the Prima and ends up penniless with desperate plans to prostitute herself. However, a guardian in the form of a cat sent by her father finds her and persuades her to follow his madcap plan to Blackpool, England. Once there, Thomas sets up a ploy to convince the owners of a famous music hall that Ninette is actually Nina, a famous Russian ballet dancer shipwrecked on the coast. Soon though, it turns out that Ninette has angered one of the most dangerous elemental creatures of all time and she must earn the help of the Elemental Masters who own the music hall she now dances for.

I think it's the tone of Ms. Lackey's books that makes them so wonderful. They're beautifully written, in a semi-formal tone that leaves you in no doubt you're reading the work of a talented author. They are fantasy books, but it's not in-your-face fantasy. Instead, there are two nicely interwoven plots in Reserved for the Cat - there's the talking cat and the elemental magic, but then a large part of the book is also Ninette's struggle to win the trust of the music hall owners and succeed as a ballerina. They bounce off each other perfectly, leaving a pleasant mix of the mundane and the magical.

The characterisation never fails in any of Mercedes Lackey's books, but this one features especially likeable people. Ninette is desperate but still retains her morality, and struggles against the lessons her now-deceased mother instilled in her. There is a romantic interest but it's actually very well done - there's no InstaLove and it's quietly developed between the lines almost. Although Ninette is the clear protagonist, the narrative is occasionally told from the point-of-view of each of the characters, so they all become more than a little real and the plot is explored from every angle. Honestly, I feel like I know each and every one of them.

There actually isn't one single thing I dislike about this book, not one. It's a beautifully told, moving rendition of Puss in Boots with a likeable ballerina threatened by a world she never knew existed.

Read my review of Wizard of London, Book Five of the Elemental Masters series.

Review: The Wizard of London (Elemental Masters #5) by Mercedes Lackey

This is the fifth book in the Elemental Masters series by Mercedes Lackey, a set of amazing books that usually involve a person who is unaware they have an unusual control over a particular element. The Wizard of London is different in that it is the only book in the series to involve Talents - gifts that are weaker than those who can control Elementals, but powerful nevertheless.

Plot summary -  Isabella Harton and her husband run a school for the Talented children whose parents live abroad, providing magical training but also a warm home and genuine love. When Sarah and Nan are welcomed into the school, they bring with them terrible danger -  Sarah is a young necromancer, whose gifts make her a target for all those who would abuse her power.

To help her charges, Isabella must reconnect with her old circle of friends - all of whom are Elemental Masters and refuse to believe that the danger comes from one of their own.

My terrible summary really doesn't do the book justice at all - it's much less YA-sounding and wishy-washy than that. Instead, it's a powerful story of dark magic, Indian protectors and Elemental Magic. The style is quite formal but the dialogue flows naturally and the descriptions are beautiful. I've read many criticisms of Mercedes Lackey, but I've never read a single one that can fault her style.

My one gripe with this book is Nan, the only unlikeable character in the whole thing. Don't get me wrong - Ms. Lackey is the Queen of Characterisation. Her players always feel fully-rounded and somehow real, but Nan winds me up every time I read this book and I don't think that was the author's intention. I find her jealous, whiny and selfish and it irritates me how she gets so much more praise than Sarah, who is meant to be more powerful. A small niggle, but it pokes at me insistently throughout. 

I adore Mercedes Lackey, and the Elemental Masters series are my favourite of all of them. This series in particular is a wonderful place to start reading the Fantasy genre as the magical situations are never overdone enough to make a non-Fantasy-er feel out of place or silly. Additionally, the prose doesn't feel like that of a YA novel at all - I find that Fantasy YA is often nigh-on unreadable.

It's hardly intellectual literature, but these books give me The Happy Book Fuzz every time I read them. 

Read my review of the sixth book in the Elemental Masters series, Reserved for the Cat.