The Devil's GardenThe Devil’s Garden
by Jane Kindred

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

So many things to list that were wonderful about this book. Beautiful prose, fascinating world, compelling characters, heartbreaking dilemma.

BUT, my complaint is that this novella is a novel that wasn’t made to live up to its promise and allowed to be a novella instead. (Notice I said “made” not “allowed” ’cause I know it ain’t rainbows and wishes that come up with those other 50k words.)

I have absolutely no problem with novellas simply for being novellas. In fact, I love that the e-pub age has allowed so many of them to be out there that would have been turned aside otherwise. I have read and enjoyed many. There are so many good stories that are in essence only 30k pages and that’s that.

This wasn’t one of those. This was a 80k word story shoved into 30k words. This could have grabbed me by the throat and held on, broken my heart and made me sing with happiness if the world had been deepened and we didn’t simply skim over everything that built to the climax so that we could get to the good stuff. As it is, it was simply fascinating and made me a bit weepy at one point. If that’s the worst you can say about any book, I’d count that a win.

OK, rant over. It’s totally worth reading. But I’m putting in my request now for the rest of the story.

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