I liked a lot of the ideas in this book. The everyday-ness of what is essentially a different world with a different history was pretty refreshing, but sometimes the randomly changed words for things made it hard for me to follow. I liked the magic and the vampires and Others and the supportive, powerful older women characters. I even liked the main character, even though I had trouble following her inner monologues sometimes. But I had a hard time understanding what was happening a lot of the time when the character wasn't sure herself, and I had a hard time being sucked into the world of the book with the story.

I'll definitely try some of McKinley's fairy tale retellings, which I haven't even though I really enjoyed The Blue Sword and The Hero and the Crown, but I wasn't enchanted by this book, just occasionally intrigued.