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Princesses, pegasi, magic!  What could go wrong?  Dang... — Princesses, pegasi, magic! What could go wrong? Dang...

Currently drinking: Honeybush tea because that totally sounds like something a pegasus would drink.

Star Rating: 2/5
Genre: Young Adult, Fantasy
Buy the book: Amazon

*Deep breath* Okay, guys, if you've been following me for a while, you know that I am a huge Robin McKinley fan. I adore her writing. Her gift with painting pictures with words is enviable. Her romances make me swoon. Sunshine, Deerskin, and Chalice are among my favorites, but really I've never read anything by her that I didn't like...until now. Ugh, I feel so bad saying this...really and truly. I was not that enthused by Pegasus. When I told the hubs this, he was shocked. "But she's your favorite" he said to me. Yeah, I know. Before I get into all that, though, here's a little info on the book.

From Amazon: Because of a thousand-year-old alliance between humans and pegasi, Princess Sylviianel is ceremonially bound to Ebon, her own pegasus, on her twelfth birthday. The two species coexist peacefully, despite the language barriers separating them. Humans and pegasi both rely on specially trained Speaker magicians as the only means of real communication. But it's different for Sylvi and Ebon. They can understand each other. They quickly grow close--so close that their bond becomes a threat to the status quo-and possibly to the future safety of their two nations.

First, the good stuff. McKinley's is, as always, a master of description and world building. The way she paints scenes and settings, they just flow around you without you even realizing it's happening. The pictures rise up in your mind, unbidden, giving the backdrop depth. She also did a really interesting thing with some of the dialogue. In the book, the pegasi speak a different language, and it sounds very different from English because they have horse mouths and not human mouths. It's handled really simply with dashes and repeated letters to give the reader much more of a feel of the words rather than the words themselves, and I found it to be really effective. Aaaaaaand that's about it.

*Sigh* Well, I think the best word I can use to describe the book is slow. I just could not get into it. It took me years to get through. That's not an exaggeration, actual years. I'd pick it up, read a bit, put it back down, and wouldn't open it again for a couple of months. I understand it's part of a series, so I think the next one will likely move a lot faster, but even still. Did we really need Sylvi's entire life/backstory? To me it seems like a whole lot of nothing happens in the first half of the book.

I can't say for certain whether I'll read the next in the series. I don't know that I care about the characters that much, to be totally honest. There's another one from her, Shadows, which I will read, however...probably once my book buying ban is over.

Thanks for reading!