Christiana's review
Airs Above the Ground (Coronet Books)
by Mary Stewart
Christiana's review
Airs Above the Ground (Coronet Books) by Mary Stewart
Christiana's review
rating:
3&1/2 stars. This is the fourth Mary Stewart book I've read now, and I liked this one second-best to the Moonspinners. The plot suffers a lot from coincidentalitis (the heroine is traveling with a boy who's an expert on the exact thing the heroine's husband has become entangled in, which relates to Austrian horse trainers?!) but it's fun if you take it for what it is, a silly adventure. There's some exciting sequences and one genuinely unexpected plot twist.
There's also a fair bit of 1960s cultural misogyny - where the man treats the woman like she's precious and fragile and needs special treatment, and the woman is okay with this - which I found 95% appalling and 5% attractive (oh come on, admit there's some appeal to being treated like a priceless jewel!). That was silly, but a symptom of the era when it was written so I found it more interesting than annoying.
There's also a fair bit of 1960s cultural misogyny - where the man treats the woman like she's precious and fragile and needs special treatment, and the woman is okay with this - which I found 95% appalling and 5% attractive (oh come on, admit there's some appeal to being treated like a priceless jewel!). That was silly, but a symptom of the era when it was written so I found it more interesting than annoying.
