The Glittering Court by Richelle Mead
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Lady Elizabeth Witmore the Countess of Rothford had lost her parents at a young age and lived with her grandmother who had been trying to arrange a marriage for her. When it’s set up for her to marry a distant cousin that Lady Witmore doesn’t find appealing at all she only wishes for her freedom of being able to fall in love and choose for herself.

When Cedric Thorn comes to recruit one of the servants that is being let go Lady Witmore finds herself fascinated with The Glittering Court that Cedric works for, low income girls are taught the ways of high society for a year and then sent to the new world to find a husband since there haven’t been many women that have gone to the new world yet.

With her ladies maid being upset at the whole idea of the Glittering Court Lady Witmore gets the idea to send Adelaide off to her family and to take her place among the court using Adelaide’s identity. Fortunately Cedric agrees to keep her secret and goes along with her plan to escape to the new world so her training begins.

I’d really been looking forward to The Glittering Court for quite some time now since I’ve really enjoyed most of Richelle Mead’s work that I’ve read. I wasn’t a big fan of Soundless so I had my fingers crossed that this one would be better. Well, it was slightly better but still not really up to my expectations.

One of the things I liked about The Glittering Court was the historical aspect of the story. Overall it reminds me of the time when America was the “new world” and the beginning of travel to America but the names have changed to these fictional countries. Certainly the idea of titles being important and religious persecution all fit that time period in England though even if this was a imaginary fantasy world.

I also enjoyed Adelaide/Lady Witmore and Cedric as the main characters in the story along with the secondary characters and their roles in the story line. The budding romance between Adelaide and Cedric was nice and not rushed. Mira and Tamsin each had intriguing secrets that will be interesting to see if I guessed right if those are revealed in later books. The not so nice characters in the story also played their parts well.

Now, what I didn’t like was the pacing of this book. There’s a good half going by without much happening other than her leaving to run off to join the court. There’s also not too much depth to a lot of the story either, often the one thing that gets elaborated on is what kind of dress Adelaide is wearing in any given situation instead of giving details to the actual situation. It would get very boring after a while learning about materials and ruffles.

Once more starts happening in the second half of the story I still found myself just wishing there was just more to what was happening and less clothing details. It’s a decent story line that really didn’t need to be labeled “fantasy” and could have simply taken place in England and America. But the fact that it goes so elaborate with clothing and not with the details of the plot made this somewhat of a disappointment again.

Overall, 3 stars for this one as I did enjoy the plot even at it’s slower pace but found the story too shallow to rate any higher.