Cold Magic – Kate Elliott (The Spiritwalker Trilogy #1)
2010, Orbit Hachette
502 pages
RRP: AU$22.99
ISBN: 9781841498812

Reviewed by Gillian Polack

Two cousins are each other’s best friend. They are at school together and plotting mischief as intelligent (and bored) girls do in their late teens. Cat is ripped from both the emotional comfort of a poor family with status to maintain and from her best friend’s company, and forced into marriage. The marriage is not what it seems. Nothing is what it seems. Cat’s whole world is turned upside down over and over again. This is the basis of the story. It provides a very strong underpinning for the adventures that Cat has, for the relationship with her cousin is firm enough and developed enough so that we have a clear understanding of who she is and what she’s leaving behind. At one stage Elliott cheats with this, and adds to the background so that we begin to doubt those relationships: this detracts from that lovely emotional solidity that she establishes early on, but she is a fine writer and, it shifts the tenor of the novel rather than destroying it.

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