REVIEW- A Tale of Two Castles

I would like to thank my mom for the nice (while some what embarrassing) introduction.   I will be the assistant reviewer for two reasons.  One, I love to read, and two, my mom has too many books to read.  Though, I find that a little hard to believe because I never seem to have too much to read, but too little.


I am a big fan of all of Gail Carson Levine's books, so I had high expectations for this one.  I actually stole the reader from my mom before she had a chance to get past the first page.  "A Tale of Two Castles" is a fantasy mystery that is about a twelve year old girl named Elodie.  Her parents send her away to be apprenticed to a weaver.  But she has plans of her own.  She wants to be a  mansioner (Actor).   But the head mansioner refuses to take her on as his apprentice because she does not have money.  Instead she is accepted  as a dragons assistant. The plot soon thickens, and Elodie has to find out who set a band of murderous cats on the town's ogre, and who poisoned the king, before time runs out. 


I personally thought that the book was bland and lacking emotion.  It's a far cry from the other books that Levine has written.  I was confused for the first half of the book.  I have a feeling that this book could be great, if she had only but put a little more effort into her writing.  There was also a problem with the dragons gender.   I have no problem with the beast's gender as it was.  But one gets tired of seeing four capitalizes IT's in one sentence.  I think my biggest problem with the book was all the IT's.  Just ask my mom.  It's not like I didn't complain to her every five minutes.  


Don't get me wrong, I didn't see bad things on every corner, I think the book has the makings to be a really great tale someday.  But I did learn a new motto for life.  'Just because an author has written one good book in his or her life time, doesn't mean I can expect them to write an  epic.' 
~Beka~