A Great and Terrible Beauty, by Libba Bray

A Great and Terrible Beauty
by Libba Bray
403 pages (trade paperback)
Genre: Fiction/Fantasy/YA/Historical

It took me the longest time to finish reading this, because the story had two opposite effects on me: I was compelled to turn pages as I read, but once I closed the book and put it down I had absolutely no inclination to go back. I predicted or suspected all of the plot twists, and the climax was cheesily sentimental.

( Spoilers )

Certainly Bray's debut novel is not bad; however, in my opinion it doesn't deserve the hype. It is perhaps a little above mediocre in the YA category, but for this reader (who happens to fall, by virtue of age, into the YA category herself) it is solidly average overall. And you know, life is too short to be reading only average books, when so many exceptional works are being published every day. I won't be reading the sequels to A Great and Terrible Beauty, although I do welcome end spoilers.

BPAL: Y'ha-Nthlei

Y'ha-Nthlei
*We shall swim out to that brooding reef in the sea and dive down through black abysses to Cyclopean and many-columned Y'ha-nthlei, and in that lair of the Deep Ones we shall dwell amidst wonder and glory for ever.

A great undersea metropolis located below Devil's Reef. A swirling, lightless, effervescent scent: the deepest marine notes with bergamot, eucalyptus and foamy ambergris.

Wet: Pleasingly fresh and familiar, but I can't place it.
Dry: Seems a little more flowery now--light honeysuckle? With a hint of lemon or lime, maybe. --And now that I've looked at the description, wow am I off. Guessing that the citrus note is bergamot; I have no idea what eucalyptus and ambergris smell like. But it's pleasant, refreshing, so a keeper.