<<first <previous INDEX OF ALL REVIEWS next> last>>

Cecilia Dart-Thornton
ILL-MADE MUTE, THE
book cover

The Bitterbynde Trilogy Book 1
2001, May, Warner Aspect, hc


Who recommends: Julie, Lori
Who discommends: Edith, Margaret

Ok, I finished it. No romance, just a little romantic element that perhaps will appear in the next books. I really enjoyed the book even tho it was quite wordy and full of little tales & stories & poems & songs and stuff, usually not my style. But I guess I liked the storyline, I really liked the heroine, and I loved the mute. :> --Julie (25 Jun 01)

I haven't finished ILL-MADE MUTE yet (2/3 of the way through) but I don't recommend it. She does a good job world-building but she does a poor job incorporating the world seamlessly into the book. In the first fourth of the book she presents the world in big boooooring chunks. Little plot, little characterization, just a big glob of world. I read the end where she gives the sources for the tales of wights and she says she was glad she was able to incorporate so many lost tales. And here I was wondering if the many story-tellling sessions at the beginning of the book had a point!! Apparently the *only* point was to rescue them from obscurity. Scuze me, but if I wanted to read wight tales, I would go to the library! These tales did not further the (skimpy) plot -- they did nothing but take up space and waste my reading time.

My other beef is with the characterization. I didn't see the growth of the heroine -- she just decides to do this or that. And most of the secondary characters were too archetypical. There's the too-good-to-be-true friend, his immensely understanding sister, etc. And the plot is *so* predictable. I *will* finish this book -- by skimming it. I'm hoping the second book will be better so I'm determined to get this one under my belt.--Edith (26 Jun 01)

Recommend. (I really liked it!) --Lori (08 Jul 01)

What exactly did you like about it? Seriously. I'm wondering cause it appears you and Julie read a completely different book than I did. Isn't it wonderful how a book can stir diametrically opposite reactions? And I hope I'm not annoying you when I point out things which bothered me. I want you to refute me or give me an insight to change my mind.

I finished this book after my computer died and was going to say lots more cutting things about it but now I've forgotten most of them. Good thing, probably :-)!! The three things I still remember annoying me are:

1. It ends in the middle of NOWHERE. This is one of those dreadful "to be continued" books. I really really really hate them.

2. The hero was too perfect. Geeze there were no end to his virtues -- he was good-looking, athletic, patient, kind, intelligent, knowledgable in plants, medicine, geography, etc. The only thing she didn't mention was his penis size and I'm sure it's a 12-incher at least. Maybe she's saving that tidbit for the next book.

S
P
O
I
L
E
R

3. She sees her new face and can't judge how it looks. Please. We all are pretty sure she's drop-dead gorgeous but she can't tell??? If she can tell a guy is handsome and she knows other women are beautiful, she can surely objectively tell whether her new face is.--Edith (13 Jul 01)

About the stories at the beginning, I thought they were partly about introducing us to the world and possibly to set up some stuff that may happen later.

1. It ends in the middle of NOWHERE. This is one of those dreadful "to be continued" books. I really really really hate them.

I don't seem to mind quite so much. As long as I know it's to be continued. I don't think there's anyway to get around it for some books. I kind of liked the way it ended.

2. The hero was too perfect. Geeze there were no end to his virtues -- he was good-looking, athletic, patient, kind, intelligent, knowledgable in plants, medicine, geography, etc. The only thing she didn't mention was his penis size and I'm sure it's a 12-incher at least. Maybe she's saving that tidbit for the next book.

There was something that wasn't perfect. He wasn't kind or caring in one instance, and I wondered if there was more to it. I'm hoping that there's something more to him (or less to him?) than meets the eye. If he turns out to be exactly as portrayed, then, yes, he is too perfect.

spoiler: 3. She sees her new face and can't judge how it looks. Please. We all are pretty sure she's drop-dead gorgeous but she can't tell??? If she can tell a guy is handsome and she knows other women are beautiful, she can surely objectively tell whether her new face is.

Yeah, I did kind of wonder about that. I think it was in part because she's just glad to have a face, and in part because she has trouble judging things about herself. Heck, she didn't even know she was female at first! (Something really blanked out her mind.)--Lori (15 Jul 01)

OK - I give up! I got a third of the way through this book and found myself looking for excuses not to pick it up. It just seems to go on and on, one adventure after another, leading nowhere. I presume the book does have a destination and will even go so far as to say that it might be a worthwhile destination, but the journey's not to my taste. I have no objection to journeys per se and will happily follow some authors anywhere they choose to go but I do like a feeling that we are actually going somewhere. apart from that, one thing that really annoyed me was that this is a completely different land from ours, not a future/past or even alternative world, and yet they speak Gaelic? and have the same folk tales as us?? This threw me completely out of the story as I tried to work out a rationale.--Margaret (22 Apr 02)



Back to Top | About Us