Opinions on S.L. Farrell?

[kcf]

I finished up A Magic of Nightfall - it was quite good. This series isn't without its issues, but its solid epic fantasy that I don't hesitate to recommend.

 

[Seegee]

After I finish Small Favor (Jim Butcher - Harry Dresden) I've got Magic of Twilight ready to go (and yes my SO did scold me for buying the first book of another ongoing series), so I'm glad to read largely positive things here about it.

 

[Trinuviel]

I recently read A Magic of Twilight and I really enjoyed. After a slightly cumbersome beginning, the story turned out to be a real pageturner that kept me reading into the small hours of the night. I especially enjoyed the setting, which seems to be primarily inspired by the Italian Renaissance with a dash of Viennese fin-de-siècle. I also liked how the magic is also used for more mundane and practical things - like lighting the streets of the city and powering the carriages that transport the clergy. A nice touch that I don't see very often - and that I really would like to see developed to a further degree.

I always end up wondering about a lot of things in these low-tech magical worlds - if magic exists why not use it for practical purposes, to make a lot of mundane work easier and faster, just like technology has made a lot of stuff in our world easier - just think what the access to vacuum cleansers, washing machines, fridges, freezers, etc. has meant to the ordinary family in the estern world! My grandmother (and my mother to a certain extent) grew up without all the big electric appliances that all of us take for granted - and the amount of work she had to do around the house on a daily basis effectively prevented her from being educated beyond her 14th year and from entering the work force. ´Little stuff like this matters in world-building, and I would love to see more of it.