I bought this in a charity shop on the way to a BC meet-up. I'm not a great fan of Sampson, and the blurb looked as though it gave away too much of the story, but I was persuaded by an encouraging review from Diana Wynne Jones, who is quoted as saying that Sampson "has the gift of making you live through every scene". Well, Sampson cannot aspire to the heights of a writer like Jones, but in fact the book is pretty gripping. (Gripping enough to make me late for work this morning, anyway.)

Where the book falls down is its complete lack of subtlety. The oppressors and the oppressed, the heroine who has been raised to be prejudiced, the provincial governor who's a bit more enlightened than his superiors at the capital - all totally predictable. The back-story incident in which the heroine's mother had been poisoned: well, at least that hadn't been a frame by the Chief Sorcerer's faction, but to dismiss it with a lame apology from the leader of the freedom fighters was very anticlimactic.

The world Sampson has created deserves a better story. The one race whose magic depends on the Flame, the other that has an affinity for animals - the links between the two need working out in another two books. Maybe Sampson intends to do so, but I really don't think she's up to the job. I hope she proves me wrong.

WILD RELEASE NOTES:

On the boulder behind the bench

found where it was left on the rock 11/08/2008 in Coalville family will read it and re-release

before this book is gone from the house as the previous entry suggests I will read it too.