Book review: Cold Steel

Cold Steel by Kate Elliott is the third in a trilogy, begun by Cold Magic and Cold Fire. I quite liked both of those - though one of them I didn't finish, because some rotter bought the Waterstones copy that I was reading; so it goes. But by the time of Cold Steel something has gone wrong; either my tastes have changed or her abilities have slipped; or she got bored and ran out of ideas to finish this story off. She certainly didn't run out of words though; this brick is 750 pages long and I got through 450 before giving up. Also this review is very late; I put it aside well before Christmas, perhaps in the hope I would wish to come back to it; but no.

The original, if I recall correctly, preserved some sense of mystery; this volume is young female brats being cwuel to their young male lovers; really, sublimated schoolgirl stuff I think.

The characters wander around an alt-Europe to no particular purpose; very little sticks in the mind ecept a nice scene by a reedy misty cloudy riverbank; but that's not enough to make a book of.

Subsequent to this I read the Witch Roads and liked it albeit with qualifications, so there is hope for her yet.